


An Insomniac’s Daydream

by Young_Rouge_Rose



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Angst, Chaptered, Comfort/Angst, Demisexuality, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Angst, Existential Crisis, Existentialism, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M, Magical Realism, Mild Smut, Musicians, POV Third Person, Pansexual Character, Psychological Horror, Slow Burn, Symbolism, plot heavy, possible tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 14:03:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 48,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9388325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Young_Rouge_Rose/pseuds/Young_Rouge_Rose
Summary: Dan Howell is an insomniac, a pianist, and possibly a modern day Nostradamus, as his twisted dreams seem to be pointing towards the destruction of the world. When plagued with such dreams he does what any sane and natural human being would. He gives up sleep.No sleep. No dreams. No end.Phil Lester is a humble barista who feels like a daydream and somehow manages to keep the monsters, which come with such twisted dreams at bay.But there is more to it than meets the eye, for the past always has a way of catching up with you.This has happened before, but it can't happen again.





	1. Prologue

**_“I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day. Today it seemed to want to change. And then anything, anything could happen.”_ **

**_― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea_ **

 

It had started when Dan was sixteen. Sixteen? Seventeen? Seventeen.

It had started when Dan was seventeen. That much he was sure of, or at least he thought he was sure of.

He was seventeen when it started. What ‘it’ was exactly, was harder to define.

‘It’ could best be described as a series of dreams, the kind of dreams one would often get if under some kind of anaesthesia, or when in the midst of a high fever. A drugged out fever dream. That’s what Dan had called them at first. Though it hadn’t seemed like much. Just odd dreams. Everyone had odd dreams from time to time. It wasn’t until months spun by with these dreams plaguing his sleep every night incessantly, that he even questioned them to be strange. Though the waking had always been odd.

How does one describe the indescribable? That was what the dreams were. At first, they had just been a mash of colours and sound. It was as if someone had only half tuned in the radio. There were words here and there, but for the most part, it was simply a wash of white noise, obnoxiously loud but with little to no sense or purpose. 

The more dreams he had the more vivid they became, as if somehow after time he was finally starting to pick up a signal. It started with flowers and sunlight. It was the kind of brilliant sunlight, which only happened upon waking. It was white sunlight. This was in stark contrast with the flowers. They were a muted shade of slowly wilted death. No one had bothered to remove the dying flowers from their vase. Maybe there was no one to remove them. Who cared enough to place flowers in a vase and yet not enough to remove them once they died?

 As time went on, more images came. Beyond the flowers and the sun was a room, large and vast. There were beds, all a sterol shade of white with bodies of the same colour. A greyish white. Slowly wilting people, folding into themselves like origami. It was as if they were trying to shape their decrepit frames into something beautiful like a living flower or a swan.

After six months of dreaming he had moved from looking at the room to looking inward, for what seemed like the first time. The first thing that struck him about himself in this dream was his hands. At seeing his dream selves’ hands for the first time his heart grew still and stood to attention. He knew his hands like- well, the back of his hand and these were not it. He felt like Sartre. His hands didn’t feel like his hands. They were some kind of foreign and detached form of flesh because, his hands were not his hands.

This was a fairly odd anomaly to explain, yet it was also simple. If you see your hands, something in your mind recognises them as your own, the same as if you saw your friend’s hands or your mother’s hands. Dan didn’t know whose hands these were, but they were not his own.

He had read somewhere that the dream-self didn’t always look the same as the waking-self. Maybe he just had a complex. He would have to add that to the ever-growing list. So with the frequent dreams he began to know these hands. It was like having a second set of his own, like slipping into a second skin at night, repeating this loop of a fractured dream. He would wake in bed, be near blinded by the whiteness of the room, look to the dying flowers, and then realise there were more beds, more people, more dying flowers and then look at his hands. The hands that were not his. He would then look to the window and watch as outside something fell in slow, drifting flakes. At first in his dreams, he had thought them to be snow, but in the waking world, he found himself questioning if such a grim scene would take place in the snow.

The next time he dreamed he realised it was ash.

When waking from the dream it would be another odd anomaly. Waking was always the hardest part. It felt something like a rough pressure pushing down against his chest as if his body wished to stay in the dream. Sometimes there would be marks left on his body, like nails digging into flesh. It was likely just him, holding onto himself, trying to keep himself grounded. It was odd none the less.

Dan had always been a slightly negative, yet realistic person. One day something terrible could happen to him, to everyone. That was what this dream felt like, a kind of warning. He recalled talking about a similar subject in A-level philosophy. If you could see your own death, but do nothing to change it, would you still want to know? After these dreams, Dan’s answer had been a resounding no. Not because he was particularly scared of death, but more because he didn’t want to have to think of it happening over and over again, constantly questioning when. He didn’t want to live his life in fear of death, like some war propaganda. He didn’t want to have to be constantly checking for ‘reds under the beds’.

In his dreams the sky was overcast. Did he want to think he was going to die every time it looked like it would rain? He never saw the face of the dream woman in the bed beside his own, but he had seen her hair: simple, slightly longer than shoulder length, brown. Did he want to think he was dying whenever he caught a glimpse of someone who fit this broad archetype?

Death was a chav. He didn’t want to deal with until he had to. So these dreams could fuck right off, thank you very much.

And they did. For a little while.

Dan had forgotten about the dreams as time passed. They were just dreams after all. Time passed and the dreams had stopped.

But upon waking from this very same dream, no longer as a boy, but as a young man in his twenties, he felt a new kind of impending doom pressing into his chest. The same dream played on loop holding a new feeling of nausea.

He made the simple choice.

He would not sleep.

No sleep. No dreams. No end.


	2. A Sleepless Lullaby

**_I fix nothing, I let it go._ **

**_-Jean Paul Satre_ **

Dan Howell looked like death on a bad day. It was almost six in the evening and London was already shrouded in darkness. Such was London in the winter. It was always dark. He hadn’t slept in five days, not a wink. He thought quietly that it must be a record as his footfalls fell into harmony with the commuters heading home after a long day’s work. Dan, on the other hand, was doing quite the opposite.

He had work at the usual time of half eight, in a slightly upmarket restaurant and bar, just off Bond Street. He had taken The Tube via the Jubilee line to get there. He was at least two hours too early to even arrive at work. He had just been tired of being locked away in his flat, growing sleepier by the minute. He couldn’t let himself sleep and his ‘flatmate’ was either never home or blasting underground trap or grime music so loudly they had received several noise complaints about it in this month alone.

Imagine Dan’s relief when he was told the other lad would soon be moving into a flat with his ‘bird’. Dan had always hated that turn of phrase, but it was the only word he had ever heard Mathew (his flatmate) use to describe his other half. So who was he to use another? The only downside was that he was too broke to afford a London flat by himself. So he had a problem. Even the best pianists didn’t get paid overtly well. Maybe he would have to start busking down on Oxford Street like all of the other ‘struggling musicians’. He couldn’t picture it somehow.

That was Dan’s occupation, a pianist. If asked he would say he liked it well enough. It was something he was passionate about and best of all it helped to have somewhere to go at night from half eight to half two. It meant he would have less of the night to have to fight sleep for fear of what his odd dreams would show him. He thought they had finally gone several years ago, but with their return, he was beginning to feel his sanity dwindle.

He was so damn tired. He needed a coffee.

That was how he ended up at some overpriced and over-sugared coffee shop, mindlessly glaring at the assortment of pastry treats when he grew distracted by the bags under his eyes in the reflection shown in the display case.

By the time he reached the front of the line he hadn’t even bothered to pick something to order. That was a side effect of the insomnia. He was never quite all there. It was like his mind was working in slow motion and could only focus on one task at a time. His eyes were glued to the inside of his wallet as he dug around for a five-pound note to hand over.

“What can I get for you today?” Came an oh-too cheery voice for Dan’s weary head to comprehend. It was male and ever so slightly Northern.

“Something overly festive and inappropriately cheery.”

Dan still didn’t look up, but he could hear the smile in the other man’s voice. It was kind of a wavering chuckle, a slight wheezing cackle, just being held back behind his cheery voice.

“Surprisingly that doesn’t narrow it down.”

Of course it didn’t. Fucking consumerism.

“What’s your favourite? Just give me that one.”

He slid a five-pound note across the space between them and watched as slightly too pale, male hands filled a space where there once was nothing and took a weathered note. Something about his hand had interested Dan enough for his eyes to move to the boy’s face.

He looked like a bird in the snow. For the most part, his frame was thin and surprisingly delicate, considering his height near matched Dan’s own towering six-foot-three frame. His skin an unbelievable shade of opaque pale. His nose, slightly narrow and hooked like that of the beak of a bird. His hair was blacker that Dan thought to be humanly possible without some kind of dye. Blue eyes. He had blue eyes. His heart did a double take. Something beyond his body seemed to whisper, oh there you are. Like he had been looking for something and without even knowing it he found it.

“Would you like anything else with that?” The stranger asked, clearly seeing how he had been eyeing the sweets cabinet.

Dan tried to retain his cynical demeanour but something inside him felt lighter. This was something he hadn’t felt in months. He hadn’t felt much since the dreams had come back. He had been a living zombie, a slave to his own mind’s horror and the inevitability of his own eventual death and decay.

“You got any more recommendations?” The other boy was already smiling.

“You can’t go wrong with red velvet cake.”

Dan smirked at that and handed over a few more pounds before nodding and moving to pick a seat to wait. It was now a little past six. He had time to kill. He pulled out his phone, as one did in situations where they were in public, by themselves, but wanted little to no other human interaction. He put on his headphones and settled down, hoping to catch up on a few episodes of a new anime series before work.

He managed to lose himself in the twisting colours, manic plot and slightly incorrect subtitles of the show and in no time a hand on his shoulder shocked him back to the metaphorical waking world. He felt himself almost leap from his body, leaving his slightly tanned (for a British man’s) skin and knitted black sweater behind. His heart in his mouth. He tugged off his headphones and locked eyes with the blue-eyed snow bird.

“Sorry, I didn’t know if you notice. I called your order number. Here’s your coffee and cake. If you hate it, then it’s on me, yeah?”

With his simple words, Dan could already guess what type of guy he was. He aimed to please everyone. Dan knew because he too always seemed to aim to do the same. The only difference was that as he grew older he learned he couldn’t always make everyone happy and in trying to you would only make yourself miserable. This man seemed slightly older than him, so he should have already learned that lesson. It was nice, never the less.

 “It’s fine. I’m sure I’ll like it.”

Dan gave a dimpled smile and got a crooked grin back as the man looked to the coffee, then awkwardly spluttered as he realised he was just holding the cup and plate without having actually given them to Dan. He placed them down on the table with a clattering of plates and cutlery. He gave a fractured laugh and gestured to the screen.

“Nice anime. Are you up to date? The next episode is amazing…” Dan was smiling like an idiot when he cut the other man off with a loud,

“Spoilers!”

They both chuckled. Dan had never met anyone who hadn’t thought his taste in anime was childlike. They didn’t get it. It was nice to meet someone else who did.

“Okay, okay. But tell me what you think of it if you come in again soon.”

Dan smiled, like an idiot. A wide, lip splitting, dimpled grin and nodded.

“Will do,” He noted, looking to the employee’s name badge.

Phil. It was a nice enough name. One he wouldn’t mind seeing too often if he did happen to come into work a little early again tomorrow. Though his voice sounded like a lullaby. It made him crave sleep, even with the caffeine and Dan wanted to desperately avoid things which made him wish for sleep.

He watched the boy leave and felt the lightness in his body also drains away, as if suddenly all the air had been sucked back out of the room and again he was alone in his own head, sipping coffee and watching the last few minutes of the anime.

The coffee was surprisingly good. It was like Christmas in a mug. A warm and spicy sensation settled in and even though Christmas was over, and the new year was depressingly in full swing, he felt strangely comforted by the taste. It tasted like what the other boy made him feel.

He tried to steer his mind away from dangerous thoughts and back to the screen of his phone. He couldn’t even think of the possibility of letting anyone in with his life such an utter wreck. He needed to sort himself out before he even attempted to let others in. It was like inviting your friends onto a sinking ship. Not the best idea.

So he drank his coffee, quietly sulking in self-solitude, not allowing himself to look over his shoulder at the other man. He liked anime. He liked to please. He seemed to be one of the only people Dan had ever been served by who actually seemed genuine when greeting him. He seemed like someone Dan could hold a conversation with, but then again, maybe he was just putting too much weight on a small interaction because he was lonely.

The only other human contact he had that week was with Mathew (who was not the sort of person Dan could hold a conversation with), the postman, and his mother over the phone. He never talked at work. He just played and went home. They weren’t Dan’s kind of people. Far too posh and pompous for their own good- though Dan was pretty sure that was how Mathew described him when he wasn’t around.

He finished his coffee and cake before gathering his things and heading for the exit, but then gave in and allowed himself a small glance over his shoulder. There he saw Phil, the bird in the snow, the smiling boy.

“See you next time,” Phil beamed, a wide smile spreading over his face as if he knew there would be a next time.

Dan supposed maybe there would be.

***

Black and white piano keys blended together as hours fell away to the quiet trill of music. Scribbled black notes all meld as one song blends into the next. Dan focused on nothing but the sheet music. Playing was like sleeping. Finally, it felt like his mind was free to rest for several hours.

Around him, conversation flowed, but he remained stagnate in his own little world. If he closed his eyes for a minute the piano could sound like a songbird. He could block out all the other sounds of the room. There was no idle chatter, no pouring of drinks, no clatter of cutlery, no scraping of seats. It was just the piano bird and the white noise of a snow storm. This was sleep, but better. This was his bubble of momentary nirvana.

With one song left Dan’s eyes dared to glance upwards, past the sheet music and at the room. Most of the crowd was gone and now the room was only filled with stragglers, hangers-on of a nice night which for most was already long over. A woman with shoulder length hair was having a drunken conversation with the bartender. A couple in their forties were arguing about the bill with the wait staff, most of which were beginning to pack up and head home. Then there was one more, a boy in the far corner of the room. He stood tall, though his broad shoulders were slightly hunched over. Pale skin. Hooked nose. Blue eyes. At first he wasn’t looking, but then he was. There was a small smile from the other boy and for the first time in the year he had worked at the restaurant, playing the same songs day in, day out, he hit the wrong note. Piano keys cluttering together in a slightly wrong twang. No one cared enough to notice, but Dan.

Phil held up a slick black phone, which Dan instantly recognised as his own and felt heat in his cheeks. In his rush to leave, he must have forgotten it. Most normal people would leave the phone, maybe give it back to Dan next time he was in the café, not follow him and wait several hours for him to finish work to give it back. That was mental.

Dan finished the song on a sour note and stood, making a slightly embarrassed bee-line over to Phil.

“You actually waited for me to finish just to give me back my phone?” Dan asked. No hello. Just that. He was a polite git, wasn’t he? Phil seemed to find it funny.

“Hey, I came for the phone and stayed for the entertainment… well, the entertainment and Janice.” Dan raised a brow.

“Janice?”

Phil gestured towards the drunken woman at the bar. Her makeup wasn’t lasting well as the night went on, mascara having smudged just below her brow and lipstick slightly faded and askew.

“She’s thirty-seven, has five cats, two dogs, and a snake. She was also curious to know if I knew anywhere you could buy an Albanian monkey.”

It was Dan’s turn to chuckle, shaking his head slightly at just the thought. The funniest thing of all was he didn’t think the other man was even joking. He was no longer wearing his work clothes and instead opted for black jeans and an obnoxiously coloured tee shirt, something that didn’t look like it belonged in an upend restaurant. Dan kind of loved it.

“And did you know anyone who could get her an Albanian monkey?” Dan teased but surprisingly Phil shrugged.

“Once I sat next to this guy on the Euro Star who worked on the black market. He was trying to sell me a snake skinned watch.”

Again it didn’t seem like Phil was joking.

“You seem to attract some colourful characters.”

Phil snickered and nodded, “It’s a curse of mine.”

“I’m sorry I’m such a boring case study then,” Dan noted, but he wasn’t sorry. Not that they had met. Nor that they had met for the second time.

“How did you find out where I worked?”

The other boy awkwardly scrubbed the back of his neck and looked down at his high-topped boots, kicking at nothing.

“The phone was buzzing, there was a reminder that said you had work, and your phone didn’t have a passcode so I just called the person in your contacts that was listed under, ‘boss’ and told her I was your friend and that you had left your phone at my place. I didn’t know where you worked. That probably sounds creepy. Doesn’t it? It wasn’t meant to be. It’s not far from my house, so I thought I could just give it back to you in person. You should probably put a passcode on your phone.” Phil awkwardly passed the phone over.

Dan took it and looked down at the phone, overly anxious that someone else had gotten a hold of his phone. It wasn’t like there was anything too dodgy on the phone itself. It was just the principle of the thing. Phil genuinely seemed to just want to help.

“I didn’t look at anything else… promise. Just the contacts.”

Dan quietly thanked him for that. It wasn’t as if he had hundreds of hours of hentai or was arranging drug hook-ups over the phone. There was nothing to hide but still he didn’t want anyone to look.

“Thanks…”

“Phil.”

The other boy filled in the space of his name in the pause, as if Dan didn’t know it already. He supposed they never really had been properly introduced and so it seemed logical that the other boy would give his name. Dan gave an acknowledging nod of his head.

“Daniel… Dan,” He replied simply. It was enough.

The other boy took one last sip of his drink before shoving his hands (in the oddest manner) into the pockets of his jeans and letting out a long sigh.

“I should probably go, it’s way past my bedtime and you look like you could use some sleep.”

Dan couldn’t help but feel a sarcastic scoff escape his lips.

“I’m an ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead,’ kind of guy.”

Phil nodded as if what he said, coupled with how sleep deprived Dan looked was nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe that is why he attracted so many odd people. He just made everything seem normal.

“I can tell. You look like you haven’t slept in weeks.”

“Five days and counting.”

There was silence and another nod as they made their way out of the restaurant, they both hung a left clearly still heading in the same direction.

“Have you tried sleeping pills or… I don’t know, I’m sure there is some natural stuff to fix it… maybe drink less coffee.”

Dan raised a brow and fell into step with the tall boy’s long striding steps. The streets of London were beginning to wind down. It could almost be considered quiet. Almost.

“Trying to get rid of me already? It’s not like I can’t sleep. It’s just that I don’t want to… I just leave it be, you know? Anyway, do you live far away from here? I feel like I should at least walk home with you if you bothered staying through my whole bloody show just to give me my phone.”

Phil gave a vague kind of gesture, his hands flailing slightly as if to indicate somewhere in the general vicinity. Not too far away.

“A few streets down, but you don’t have to do it just because I waited. Like I said, I came to give you the phone and stayed for the show.”

“You stayed for Janice. I bet you two have a coffee date in the morning to discuss how to get your new monkey pet across the border,” Dan joked and Phil burst into a brilliant smile, giving his shoulder a light shove.

“I did not. Shut up.”

Dan found himself chuckling feeling like a school boy when he exclaimed (and made a right, proper git of himself),

“You do like her. You like Janice.”

Again Phil gave Dan’s shoulder a gentle shove.

“And you like… You like… your mum.”

They both burst into a fit of laughing, filling the streets of London to the brim with it. Their eyes met and they laughed even harder. Dan was seeing a side of himself even he had forgotten existed. He laughed like laughing was easy, and in that moment it was. It was as easy as breathing. For once he wasn’t plagued with dreams of death and horror. They were pushed to the back of his mind. Now all that mattered was this moment. It felt like the beginning of something.

“Yeah, I do like my mum. She’s quite a nice lady.”

They both chatted about nothing in particular for the rest of the walk, until Phil stopped before the door of an apartment complex, his boots scuffing again. At leaving he looked like Dan felt.

“This is me.” Dan gave a small nod as he bit his lip.

“Will you be working tomorrow?” He questioned without thinking and the other boy lit up again, smiling widely and nodding.

“Yeah, same time tomorrow.”

“Same time tomorrow… I might see you then.”

Phil gave a wave of his hand and stepped inside smiling faintly.

“I might see you then.”

Dan looked down at his phone as he began to walk in the direction of his flat. He opened it and was surprised to find a new contact listed. He paused reading Phil’s name on the screen. He bit the inside of his cheek to hold back a smile.

He couldn’t sleep tonight if he wanted to.


	3. Neither are Vampires

**_No one else will sleep with my dream, love._ **

**_\- Pablo Neruda_ **

The room was shrouded in the blackened silence of the morning. The earliest London risers were beginning to wake and go about their day. It was a little past six. Dan had nothing left to do but lay down. He had gone through that night’s events over in his head several dozen times, spent about two hours on the internet doing nothing in particular and had attempted to play a video game, but his mind was too sleep deprived to work out the controls.

Now he lay in his bed, wrapped in a warming cocoon of his sheets, fighting sleep. It was useless. He knew his body was on the brink of collapse. He couldn’t fight off sleep forever and in that moment he could feel the world growing fuzzy as the odd haze of his haunting dream world slowly began to form before his open eyes. He had no clue as to if he was awake or if sleep had already taken him. The last he could remember his eyes were still open.

The curtains were stirring, something like a black ooze dance behind the thick fabric, then slipped out into the room. This gliding, black, non-corporeal creature crept through the already shadowed blackness. It moved slowly, like death. A quiet, creeping creature.

Dan couldn’t move away from the thing. He couldn’t move at all. There was nothing to do but watch as the blackened, shadow creature dance across his floor and arrived at the foot of his bed. The creature, even when standing deathly still couldn’t hold a form, it was just a blackened, spinning creature.  The thing moved forward, at a slow and creeping pace, laying itself out over his body, his skin, his eyes. He was suddenly ice cold. His whole body wanted to shiver, to convulse in the freezing cold. Everything was now utterly black. It was like lying with a specter. He was terrified. The world utterly black. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak.

This was sleep.

***

Dan awoke in his second skin, with slightly too pale hands, in an utterly white room. His eyes took several long moments to adjust and in that time he reminded himself to breathe. This was just a dream. This was just his mind. There was nothing overtly horrifying about the dreams. There was no horrifying creatures or gruesome scenes. There was just this feeling of utter dread, which seemed to live in the pit of his stomach. This moment felt like something indescribable. He turned and tried to focus on the dying flowers, feeling his own chest heave up and down in a near frantic motion. This was a dream. Nothing could hurt him. Nothing.

 

He wished he held more control over his dream-self. He wanted to be able to get up and move around the room, see the faces of the others in the beds, look out the window. He wanted to see and understand. He wanted to wake up.

He looked at the dying flowers, then to the other people, other beds and to the window. It was as the dream had always been, until it wasn’t. He felt a sudden weight on his arm and his breath grew ragged. Something in him screamed in terror while another half of him only grew curious. He couldn’t turn. He couldn’t move. So he used his mind to infer the rest.

The hand felt large enough, no sharp nails, hardly any nails at all, and so, he supposed it wasn’t a female. He tried to think of who would be holding him. His father wasn’t the touchy kind of guy. He wasn’t close enough to anyone else that he could think of, sure he had some barely there friends or acquaintances, but he doubted anyone would be willing to sit beside his dying frame in his dream or not.

“You scared me,” Dan’s own voice whispered without him attempting to speak. It almost sounded foreign in his own ears, and yet somehow he recognises it as his own.

He was just staring up at the white roof, imperfect cracks catching his eye. He had never gotten this far into the dream, whenever he had gotten close it would just loop again. Back to the flowers and the ashy snow. He had always assumed he was dying alone. Sure he had all the other twisted souls, who lay in the beds beside him, but none of them had visitors either. They were all dying alone in the same room. This changed things.

There was someone with him.

Dammit.

He wished he could move, or could speak of his own accord. He felt like his body was an actor in a play, it knew all the cues and what to say, while his mind was the fumbling audience trying to keep up.

His voice still echoed, bouncing off the walls of his brain, repeating over and over again. He needed to wake up. He needed to get out of this hellish sleep.

“Hey, you have to look at me, yeah? It’s going to be okay.”

His voice came again turning his skin to ice. What was going on? All these endless nights of dreaming and yet he still had no more of an idea of what was going on than the first time they had begun to occur. It was like he was trying to solve a puzzle yet was only given half the pieces and none of the ones he had were fitting together in any coherent manner.

He felt his head slowly begin to turn, as if to look at the figure, the disembodied hand on his own skin. He was about to see a face, about to know a crucial piece of the puzzle. He was almost there.

That was when the loop started over again. He looked to the flowers, to the others in the room and to the window and then came the hand.

“You scared me.” His own voice repeated again.

He didn’t sound scared- not in the common use of the phrase. He seemed at a point beyond worry, his voice shaking, cracking.

“Hey, you have to look at me, yeah? It’s going to be okay.”

The loop began again.

As he looked to the window there was a loud shattering thud and he leapt upwards in shock. He was no longer in the white room. He was in his room, his bed. His eyes were open. He was awake.

***

The sound had come from the shutting of a door. Dan looked at the time and realised it was now just past midday. Mathew must have been gathering the last of his things to go. Dan yawned and quickly shook the dream from his body. There was a flash of pain, a twinge and sting, his eyes fluttered shut for a moment, jaw locking, teeth grinding. He looked down to assess the damage. His fingers found where the phantom hand of the dream man had rested and found a set of deep cuts in the shape of nails. Dan looked at his own hand, seeing the remains of flesh beneath his nails and sighed quietly.

He sat slowly, trudging over out of his room and into the hallway before ducking into the bathroom adjacent. He rummaged through his medicine cabinet, pulling out a box of plasters and antiseptic wipes. It was slightly pitiful that he was used to doing such an odd task upon waking. Maybe his subconscious just hated him. It seemed to love tormenting his psyche and clawing at him even in sleep.

He hissed in pain as he cleaned up the flesh wound, biting down on his lip as a distraction before covering the gruesome cuts and removing yesterday’s slept in clothes for a new set. They were black, like almost everything Dan owned. Tight jeans and a baggy sweater. Such was his aesthetic.

He was still tired, still hurt, still shaken but nothing could fix that. He moved out into the main room, seeing another man standing in his living room. Mathew was a tall enough man, standing around six foot, but seemed dwarfed by Dan’s towering height. He was well built, and most of the time got around in different variations of sporting attire. Today his broad arms held a large box, seeming filled with the last of his things.

“You off?” Dan asked curiously, feeling that he should at least bid his flatmate goodbye, after all, even if the two never really got along, they never got in each other’s way. He knew Mathew was the type to attend parties, or hang around pubs, but he always had the common courtesy to never bring anyone home with him or host parties without Dan noticing. He never touched Dan’s things. Besides the loud music, Dan could forget he even had a flatmate.

“Yep, I’m driving up to Manchester to meet my bird and some lads. Just had to get the rest of my shit.”

Dan simply nodded, leaning against the wall in a slightly awkward manner, trying to make the conversation seem more casual, instead of him standing, hands balled into fists at his side. He tried to relax. The dream still had him shaking.

“You got anyone to room with you yet?” Mathew continued, clearly trying to force some form of small talk. Dan shrugged slightly.

“Not yet. I haven’t really looked around much. I will have to get around to it.”

Mathew nodded and silence fell. The two stood awkwardly for a couple of moments before Mathew pushed off the balls of his feet and shifted the weight of the box from one hand to the other.

“Anyway, I better get going. Can’t be late and all that. Plus, London traffic is right shitty… I hope you don’t get a dickhead for your next flatmate.” Coming from him that was the best goodbye Dan could have expected. He might even be a little touched.

“And get yourself a girlfriend… or a pet.. or something.”

Dan almost scoffed at that folding his arms over his chest and shaking his head. At the action, he felt a sharp twinge of pain in his arm and quickly dropped his hands back down to his side.

“The landlord would have a bloody conniption if I got a pet. Plus, I’m not really looking for a girlfriend.” Dan uttered simply, moving his eyes to the door.

At least this small conversation was killing some hours of his day. That was how his life was. He just wanted to waste time opposed to living it, he was wishing away the days. When you didn’t sleep they all blended together anyway.

“Okay, get yourself a partner then…” Dan scoffed raising a brow at the odd turn of phrase.

“Hey, I can be progressive.” The other man added and Dan sighed shaking his head.

“Thanks for the advice, oh wise guru, but your starting to sound like my mother and you’re going to be late.”

Mathew nodded, tucking the box under one arm so the two could exchange an awkward handshake as a parting goodbye. Once he was gone, Dan realised he was alone. He was more alone than he had been before and even then he had felt alone. Something seemed to take over him. He grabbed his wallet, phone and coat, slipping on the last while plummeting down the stairs of his flat, out the front door and into the London freeze.

***

The coffee shop hadn’t change from the day before. There were new faces in the shop, but the bones of the place were still the same. Same drinks, same smell, same crappy heating, but most of all, same snow bird, blue eyed boy.

Dan wished he knew what he was doing. He had just arrived here. He found himself walking and this is where his feet led him. He waited with bated breath for the other lad to notice him, though he was busy fussing around the busy café. There were far more people than the day before, probably because for once Dan was out in the middle of the day. It had been what seemed like eons since he had in fact been out at such a time.

He was about to go to the counter and place an order for something, coffee, whatever. Maybe that is why he came. His body was just craving caffeine and this was the closest place to go. He knew in his heart this wasn’t true. He had passed about four cafes just to get here. It was then that his eyes met Phil and he was instantly met with a wide smile.

“There you are, out at day and everything. There goes my conspiracy theory that you didn’t sleep because you were a vampire.”

Dan felt his nose scrunch slightly as he chuckled and shook his head. He felt like he could breathe again. It was like he had spent every moment since last night underwater and now he was finally coming up to take a breath.

“Hey, I could say the same thing about your pasty skin. If you were any paler you would be blending in with the walls.”

Dan hoped he got sarcasm, because ninety percent of his words were sarcastic. He didn’t mean to be misconstrued as cruel. To his surprise, Phil too laughed.

“Touché.”

He grunted and darted off to deliver a tray full of hot beverages to a table at the far side of the room. Dan’s eyes trailed after him as he mindlessly fidgeted with the hem of his sweater. Phil soon returned and smiled widely.

“Would you like the same as yesterday?”

It took Dan too long to realise that Phil was talking about the coffee. He nodded like an idiot, slightly slack-jawed. Phil held up a hand as if to say he would be right back but then paused and uttered,

“When I get back, I want a full review of the anime yesterday.”

Dan chuckled and was slightly surprised he even remembered that.

“Okay, but when you get back you have to give me a full review of my show last night.”

Phil was already darting back behind the counter, taking a few pounds from Dan’s hand. He rushed around the other servers, making the coffee, but managed to call over his shoulder (and the loud rush of grinding coffee beans and loud conversation),

“Five stars, out of five. Would see again. I liked the ones that weren’t classical. Not that I didn’t like the ones that were classical, but you seemed to actually enjoy the others more anyway.”

Dan smiled slightly at that and waited, watching Phil buzz about opposed to taking a seat (like a normal human being). Soon Phil was done with the order, he was holding two coffees and surprisingly taking off his work apron, walking over to a table with Dan and plonking down placing one of the coffees on the opposite side of the table.

“Aren’t you going to get in trouble for slacking on the job?” Dan noted as he removed his jacket, laying it over the back of his chair. Phil shook his head.

“Nah. We get a twenty-minute break whenever, so I’m taking mine now.”

Dan couldn’t help but feel a pang in his chest. He felt special, for no reason in particular. He took a small sip of coffee and started to talk about the anime, mindlessly rattling off things he liked, things he didn’t (always the cynic) and listened as Phil continued without fail to add a silver lining. Underdeveloped characters? Maybe they would have more room to grow in later episodes. Drawn out plot? That just makes getting to the good part even better. Odd art style? Odd was cool.

Dan didn’t think he had ever met such a positive person in his life. Half of him didn’t know how to handle it while the other half seemed to quietly rejoice in this new form of conversation. They moved on to talking about other things, Phil telling Dan about all the odd people he had come across.

“Tea people?” Dan had repeated Phil’s words back at him almost snorting piping hot coffee from his nose.

“Yeah, that’s what they called themselves, tea people.”

It seemed like Phil had met every odd character within a hundred-mile radius of every place he had ever travelled. They started talking about their childhood, conversation flowing easily.

“I used to think hot dogs were actual dogs.”

“Really?”    

“Yeah, one day our dog went to the vet and my mum cooked hotdogs for lunch and my older brother Martyn had me convinced we were eating our dog. All I could think of was our shabby little dog served up on our dining room table. I thought my mum was a monster for months.”

Dan held in a laugh, watching as Phil moved in an over animated manner as he told his story.

“When I was a kid, I was the living embodiment of Winnie the Pooh,” Dan admitted, not sure why he was telling someone who was, for the most part, a stranger, this. Phil didn’t feel like a stranger, though.

“I used to walk around saying ‘Oh bother’ or ‘oh dear’. All the other kids thought I was from another bloody planet or raised by the queen.” Phil was smiling again, his own coffee and cream having created a moustache of foam causing Dan to bite his lip.

“You have a little,” Dan tried to indicate but Phil utterly missed the spot.

“No, you complete tit to the left… more… other left… fuck it.”

He leant over still smiling as he brushed the foam from Phil's face with his sweater. Phil in his slight embarrassment seemed to grab Dan’s sleeve, trying to clean it, tugging slightly on his already sore arm. Dan let out a surprised hiss and pulled away.

Phil looked up in surprise, not understanding what it was he had done wrong. Dan shook his head in quiet assurance that it was fine, but the smile seemed to have fallen from his face.

“I’m sorry,” Phil muttered, though he had nothing to be sorry for.

“No worries,” Dan assured quietly and looked at the time, coming to realise he and Phil had been talking for far more than twenty minutes.

“You should get back there. I wouldn’t want to get you fired.”

Phil looked as if he were about to argue, but then too turned to look at the time and paused, giving a long sigh he stood, gathering both of their scraps. Dan couldn’t help but feel like he had ruined it. Whatever ‘it’ was. That was until Phil paused, looking him over and asked quietly,

“Hey, are you still playing at the same place tonight?” Dan gave a small nod.

“Same time?” Another nod.

“I might see you there then.”

Dan found a smile creeping onto his face again.

“Might you?” He questioned quietly.

“I’ll see you there,” Phil corrected and Dan quickly added,

“Only if you want to come.”

“I want to come.”


	4. Absit Omen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Absit Omen: Used when referring to something undesirable, in the hope that the thing mentioned will not occur. Latin, literally may this (evil) omen be absent.

**_Your body is a museum of natural disasters, can you grasp how stunning that is?_ **

**_— Rupi Kaur_ **

Dan and Phil lay perched on a single bed, both propping their feet against the wall of Phil’s bedroom. This would be a normal gesture, maybe, if they were both teenage girls, but being two, tall and fully grown men, there was something comical to the action. They were in Phil’s room on Phil’s bed. They hadn’t gone from zero to one hundred. Time had passed, about a month in total.

Dan couldn’t help but compare the way the two had been in the past month to glue. Dan always showed up at the coffee shop before work while Phil always attended Dan’s shows, even if they were the same every night.

Dan hadn’t slept in three days and so he had been grateful that after playing his show and walking Phil home the latter boy had simply tilted his head and asked,

“Want to come in?”

That was how they came to lay like awkward Tetris pieces, two six-foot-something men trying to squash into Phil’s small bedroom. Phil was reading, Dan was fiddling with his phone. This was the kind of relationship he had never had with anyone else, the ability to be alone, almost, but with someone. Even though they had only known each other for a month, Dan might even dare to say Phil was his best friend.

“I like your place,” Dan found himself uttering out of the blue, feeling rude if he didn’t comment on it. It was small, but it smelled like autumn and vanilla beans. He supposed it was due to the littering of scented candles.

“It’s small,” Phil laughed.

“Hey, I’m meant to be Mr Cynic… It’s- cosy…”

Phil rolled his eyes, looking up at both their feet, dangling in the air and used the heel of his foot to nudge Dan’s in a slightly playful shove.

“You only say that because you aren’t living here, my house plants have more room to grow than I do.” Dan snorted at the remark.

“I hate to break it to you _Philly_ but you are already six-foot-two, how much more bloody growing do you want to do?”

At that, Phil too chuckled and spent a quiet moment fixing his slightly messy bed head. Dan found himself doing the same with his own.

“I think once I get to the size of Godzilla, or Kong. When I can crush cities, then I will be done growing.”

“You are the biggest pacifist on the earth, how could you even manage crushing a city. You would be like…”

Dan found himself moving to a standing position on the bed and faked stomping around near Phil, the bed both rising and shifting under his weight. He was trying to look menacing, like Godzilla, but instead looked like an overgrown kid playing make-believe.

“Oh god, I’m sorry… I’m so sorry… shit did I step on a child? Sorry… Excuse me!” Dan called in an over dramatic manner causing Phil to burst into a wide smile, tugging at Dan’s foot and sending him tumbling back down onto the bed.

Dan fell in a fumbled heap, half on the bed, half off and most of him crushing Phil. The older lad chuckled and helped to untangle the two of them before they both quietly move back to their previous positions.

“You are so dramatic,” Phil chuckled, shaking his head then paused, yawning.

It was about four in the morning, so it wasn’t really a surprise he was tired. Dan felt slightly bad for keeping the other boy up. He watched as Phil rolled from the bed, yawning again.

“'M going to go take out my contacts or I’ll go blind by morning.”

Dan found himself watching the boy quietly, settling down into the bed. He felt comfortable here, it was small, yes, but he liked it. Everything smelled like Phil. Maybe that was an odd thought to have about someone you considered a close friend. He decided to push these thoughts to the back of his head as Phil returned.

“What’s your place like?” Phil had asked in a casual manner as he placed his glasses on and laid back down. Their shoulders were touching. It was nice.

“A little bit bigger than this one… actually, do you know anyone looking for a person to room with?”

Dan still needed to find someone to occupy Mathew’s old room. He had seen a few people, but they were… not his type.

“I'm trying to find someone, I’ve got a spare room since my old flatmate moved out and all the people who have responded to the adverts have been mental. I think it’s because I hang around with you too much. I'm starting to attract... 'Tea people'. There was a guy who I’m ninety-nine percent sure wanted to turn the room into a functioning meth lab and then this girl who looked like a spitting image of The Bride in Kill Bill.”

Phil had chuckled quietly at the statement and Dan could feel the vibrations through his own shoulder. He was looking up at Phil’s roof, noticing that there were small imperfections, half cracks in the ceiling.

“Who doesn’t want to room with Uma Thurman?” Phil questioned and Dan shrugged.

“Call me crazy, but I’m not a fan of being impaled by a katana in my sleep.”

“Since when _do_ you ever sleep?” Phil yawned quietly as he cuddled down further into his pillow, his voice growing deeper and slightly more northern. He was clearly exhausted.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

“I know.”

There was another long pause and for a moment Dan thought that maybe Phil had fallen asleep. He contemplated leaving, since he really didn’t want to overstay his welcome but then Phil seemed to roll over slightly so Dan was forced to look at him. His glasses sat slightly askew on his face.

“Me,” Phil whispered.

“You?”

“You asked if anyone was looking for someone to room with. My lease is up at the end of the month and this place really is ridiculously small. I mean, we seem to get on well enough, it could be fun living together.”

Dan seemed to hear a weight behind his words so he too rolled over so he could see the other boy properly. There was a crease starting to form between his brows. Dan quietly thought about this. Saying they were near inseparable for the past month almost seemed like an understatement, but it did also seem a bit rushed. One thing he had learned was that you never really knew a person until you lived with them. What if that totally ruined their friendship? What if he was controlling about the flat heating or ate all his food? What if- his mind was going a hundred miles an hour.

Then again, he couldn’t imagine he would even get mad if Phil did these things. He had even mentioned the lad to his mother, in passing, on their weekly phone conversations. She had asked what he was doing and most of the time he would just say something like, ‘Oh... went out with Phil’. Last week she had even commented on it,

“I think I like this Phil boy. He seems good for you. It’s nice that you seem to be finally getting out.” Yeah. It was nice.

But moving in? Maybe that could be nice. Maybe.

“If you really mean it, sure. You should come over and see the place first. You might hate it.” He chuckled quietly and watched the other boy smile widely.

“I’m sure it will be better than this place.” 

Dan just shrugged his shoulders and settled down. Phil was beginning to nod off, so Dan sat and positioned himself at the end of the bed.

“We can talk about it tomorrow. You look like you’re about to pass out on me and drool doesn’t go well with leather.”

Phil nudged Dan again and rolled his eyes,

“That shirt is ridiculous, you know? But you don’t have to leave. It’s way too early to go anywhere, plus, I have the day off and you don’t work on Saturdays. I’ll take a nap and then maybe we can do… something. I’m too tired to plan. You plan while I sleep.”

Sleepy Phil was kind of ridiculous. Dan sighed and laid back down staying on top of the covers and Phil scooted under them. Dan feels himself growing tired in that moment and sighed, he can’t sleep with Phil right there, his night terrors shouldn’t be something anyone else has to deal with. The dreams haven’t changed, haven’t progressed.

“I guess I can stay, but I’ll be salty if you kick me out of bed while you're sleeping.” Phil chuckled and shut his eyes quietly mumbling,

“When aren’t you salty?” Point taken.

Dan rolled his eyes and just found a comfortable position. There was no way he could lay there without touching Phil, it seemed inevitable their shoulder’s brushing, ankles almost hooking.

He watched as Phil slowly but surely started to breathe more heavily, his chest rising and falling in deep heaving motions. Dan ended up giving in and shutting his eyes, mostly for the fact that he didn’t go to the Edward Cullen school of watching people sleep. This presented a new challenge. He felt time pass and his body grow to feel as heavy as lead. He and Phil were so close he couldn’t move if he wanted to. He began to feel cold, then the inevitable. Sleep took over.

***

There was a quiet stirring within a blackened room. A too cold chill had invaded. Phil found his body waking slowly, his heart sinking and shaking as he found another body beside him. His mind took a few seconds to catch up. It was Dan. Just Dan. His skin felt near icy against Phil’s flesh. Dan was fast asleep, but stirring, his body tucking into itself and in turn into Phil like a child fresh from the womb. He was grabbing at anything his hands could find.

The room was too dark to make out anything more, Phil’s thick curtains blocking out the slithers of morning light. There was a sound, something almost like scratching. A rough and high pitched grinding, like a knife carving wood. For a moment Phil thought he was still dreaming. His heart began to pound in rough, uneven beats and his ears began to ring.

He bit his lip and reached over Dan’s frame to find his phone, a sudden chill shocking through him as he did so as if someone had dumped water over his head. He reached his phone and switched it on, the new light cutting through the blackness and a feeling of utter dread springing from his frame. Maybe he was still sleeping, maybe it was some kind of nightmare.

The scratching noises continued as Phil, with the aid of the light provided by his phone, searched for something, some kind of creature or a silhouette. It sounded like it was coming from the roof. The scrape and scratching screeches grew louder as he turned the light upwards.

There it was. The spectre. The indescribable thing. A black shadow, something of a faceless dementor. It almost reminded Phil of the ‘no face’ from Spirited Away. Only his mind could think of a film at a time like this. With the light shocking the faceless thing it shrivelled, curled into itself and slunk away from the light into a darker corner of the room.

Phil furrowed his brow and swallowed his fear as he crept over Dan’s sleeping body and plunged forward into the darkness. He felt terrified to face the beast, but something in his heart spoke that it wasn’t after him. He could hear the scuttling, scraping, and other noises indescribable to the human ear. Gooseflesh prickled at his skin as he moved to fling on the lights, the things seeming to creep, just out of view into darker places. The underside of Phil’s bedside table, under the bed, behind his cabinet.

He turned to Dan, seeing that his body had somehow begun to relax. Phil thought he had seen everything. He had thought that every odd thing on earth had already been seen, that he had talked to the oddest of people, seen everything there was to see of this world’s offbeat backstreets. It seemed the world had proved him wrong.

He crept back into bed, keeping the lights on. He felt neither safe nor in danger. It was if the threat was gone for the moment, but begged to come back when he least expected, lurking in the shadows. He had always been a fan of horror novels, but seeing something truly horrific was far different to reading about it.

His shoulders brushed against Dan’s and he noticed the way his friend was still clutching onto himself for dear life. Phil sighed and quietly shuffled to remove Dan’s hand, to stop him from hurting himself. He wasn’t a restful sleeper. His dark brows set in a thin line while his lips were pursed. Phil quietly took the other man’s hand and set it down in the space between them. Dan was still curled into the foetal position, taking up almost all of the room in the bed. Phil found himself quietly surprised when in his sleep the boy’s hand clasped on tight to Phil's tee shirt. Blush rushed to Phil’s cheeks as he was quietly glad no one was there to witness it- opposed to the lurking dark creatures. They had seen. They were still lurking.

Dan was still cold, as he was lying above the covers and so Phil strategically managed to pull the sheets up over the boy without waking him. It was moments like this when Phil realised how young Dan was, several years his junior. When he was tucked into such a small ball, shoulders shaking from the cold, face contorted, he looked almost like a child. Phil still didn’t know what he was dreaming about, but common sense spoke that it couldn’t be good, and if what Phil had seen was real, and not just some fabrication of his sleepy mind then maybe, just maybe, he could understand the nightmares.

Dan mumbled in his sleep, causing Phil to sigh as he reached out, rubbing his hand up and down the other lad’s arm, trying to warm him. He wasn’t sure what he could do. He felt useless.

“It’s just a dream.” He whispered in as calming a tone as he could muster.

His own voice shook, still clearly horrified of the monsters he had seen. At seeing the blurring lines between dream and reality. What he had just seen didn’t feel real and yet now that the creatures seemed to have passed, he felt more hollow than scared. It was a horrifying numbing sensation. He looked down at Dan again, quietly deciding to keep this odd night to himself. His own quiet secret. He brushed Dan’s fringe from his face and watched as his brows smoothed over slightly.

“It’s okay. You’re okay” He repeated.

“Just a dream.”

“I’ve got you.”

***

It began in a white room, as it always did. At that moment Dan was looking upward at the cracks in the ceiling. His jaw clenched as he moved to look at the other beds in the room. He had almost grown numb to the horror of his own dreamscape. He managed to blank out the moaning of others dying gasps. That was when the world began to crack in two.

The white room crumbled, as did the bed beneath him and now the world had grown far darker. He was now sitting, his body swaying roughly in a dark carriage. It took him seconds to realise he was on the London Underground. He squared his jaw and balled his hands into fists, utterly surprised that his hands obeyed. He stood, grabbing onto a pole for support, finding that in this dream he was lucid. He found himself looking around the train. Everyone else was utterly still, opposed to one man. He stood just as Dan had and began to travel to the front of the train. Without a second thought, Dan followed.

The man wore a hat, which had cast a shadow over his face, making it impossible to see any defining features. He wore the same suit as all British businessmen did. This man could be anyone. Dan wasn’t sure if it even mattered.

He kept looking over his shoulder, feeling as though his back was exposed, to what he was unsure of. He tried to creep along behind the man, shuffling about to bypass the idle commuters. He brushed past a woman with shoulder, legs hair and paused taking her in. She had a plain face. Her hand intertwined with that of a small child, a girl of about six with a head full of blonde curls.

Dan continued forward. The closer to the front of the train he drew, the darker it became. The lights began flickering incessantly and the air began to chill. Once he reached the front of the carriage, there were no lights at all. He felt trapped in this pitch black, rattling death machine.

The man flung open the door to the conductor’s area, tapping on the glass as if to draw Dan’s eyes forward. There was a light ahead, hovering several feet off the ground at the end of the blackened tunnel. The train plummeted forward at such as speed that stopping would have been inevitable. When Dan realised the light was being held by a man, there was no time to stop the inevitable.

The sound of metal crashing into flesh, was almost inaudible. Dan had always thought it would be louder. The train didn’t even try to slow until after. Dan turned just in time to watch all the lights on the train go out. It was pitch black. The idle commuters all disappeared. It was then the rocking grew furious. Dan lost his footing and fell, colliding with the floor in an all mighty clang, his body being thrown around like a ragdoll.

“It’s just a dream.” A familiar tone echoed up through the blackness.

He felt the carriage begin to shake again and desperately reached out to grab something to keep himself stable. It was then that the sound of scratching was replaced by running water, a loud and echoing rush. He felt it begin to invade the carriage, cold and rough.

“I’ve got you.”

Dan’s eyes flew open.

***

The first thing Dan saw was Phil’s icy blue eyes gazing down at him with worry. The second thing Dan noticed was how close the two were. He felt a sudden rush of blush flood to his cheeks as he saw his hand tangled in Phil’s shirt. The third was blinding light, all the curtains in the room had been flung open sometime between last night and this morning.

“Uh… morning.” Phil noted as if to try and assure Dan everything about this situation was okay. It wasn’t. Dan quickly removed his hand.

“Morning,” He echoed, still feeling numb from the dream.

“Nightmare?” Phil asked quietly in a casual manner, sitting up.

Dan couldn’t help but notice Phil already had his glasses on, which meant he must have woken up some time before Dan. That made him feel even more uncomfortable.

“Could you tell?”

Phil gave a shrugging of his shoulders and stood up, pausing to look under the bed. Dan raised a brow out of curiosity. It looked as though Phil was searching for something. He let out an audible sigh when he seemed to find nothing.

“The neighbour’s cat got in through the window last night. I couldn’t work out where the thing ended up. Guess it went home.” Something in the back of Dan’s brain told him Phil was lying, but he didn’t question it.

“Anyway… I was about to make us breakfast. I have cereal and toast… If you’re lucky I might even have bacon.” Something seemed off. Shit. Dan had made it awkward, hadn’t he? Fuck.

“I’m not hungry,” He whispered.

“I’m not giving you that option, come on.” Phil extended a hand and Dan quietly took it, standing and moving into the main room with the other man.

Phil switched his television on in passing and moved to the other side of the room, where a small kitchen area was nestled. Dan followed and quietly sat down at one of the two dining room chairs, watching Phil make coffee and pour cereal into two bowls before adding milk.

“Phil Lester, going all out for me?” He teased, trying to find normality.

Phil raised a brow and pointed a spoon in Dan’s direction in faux accusation.

“Hey, watch it. I could spit in your cereal. Anyway, I’m going to be making you a hot chocolate since I know you love them, so be nice to me.” 

“When am I ever not nice to you?” Dan whispered, a small smile tugging at his lips, which quickly fell as the sound of a newscast on the television cut through their conversation.

“The Underground is inoperable today for an indeterminate amount of time due to a tragic freak accident.”

Dan froze, looking over his shoulder his face going deathly pale.

“Dan?” Phil’s voice wavered in warning.

“Are you okay?”

There was only one way to answer.

“No.”


	5. Earth to Space Cadet

**The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.**

**-Dante**

“So that’s it?” A conversation between two men behind the counter of a silent café continued.

“That’s it.” The other man, Phil Lester, responded as he leaned, in a haphazard manner on the benchtop.

“So you haven’t spoken to him in…”

“In a week,” Phil supplied, his fingers drumming uneasily on the benchtop.

“That can’t be it,” PJ Liguori countered.

“You can’t have just said you would move in with him, he agrees then… not talk. That’s bullshit.”

PJ then did a double-take as if to try and assure himself that no one was around to hear him cursing. Their boss wouldn’t have approved. There was luckily no one around. He tousled brown curls and continued with the conversation.

“There has to be more than that. He stayed over at your place, right?”

Right. Phil thought. That night had been utterly strange. Even now he was unsure if it had happened at all. He remembers the morning after, drinking coffee as Dan sipped hot chocolate, eating cereal and keeping conversation to a minimal as he switched the television from the news to some old episode of Buffy he knew both he and Dan had watched together before. Dan didn’t seem to comment on it. He didn’t comment on much. The whole morning, he had been off.

Maybe it was because they had spent the night practically cuddling. He must have scared the other man off. He hadn’t meant anything of it. It was just sleeping. He must have messed up somehow since there was no way Dan could have known how odd that night had been, he had been fast asleep.

“Yeah. He stayed over. Maybe that was it. It was just… something odd happened when he was over, but that’s not it because he wasn’t awake for it. He might have thought I was sending mixed signals or something.”

“Have you two talked about it?” PJ and Phil were friends in the general sense, not just work friends. They had known each other for the better part of five years. They had attended the same university, both doing a course in filmmaking together. They knew each other well. Phil knew him well enough to know what, ‘it’ would mean.

“What is there to talk about?” PJ rolled his eyes as he moved to clean off the nozzle on the coffee machine so it would at least look as though he were working.

“The fact that you’ve dated guys, and he is a guy. Who, I’m guessing by the way you two are together, is someone you wouldn’t mind dating.” Phil rolled his eyes and fiddled with the strap on his apron.

“It’s not like that, we’re friends. That’s all. You and I are both guys who are friends and there has never been any… tension between us.” PJ gave him a look as if to say he was calling Phil’s bluff.

“Within all the time I’ve known you, you never once invited me over for a buffet breakfast included sleep over and snuggle session. You are right, there has never been tension between us because there isn’t anything between us. You and sad eyes had tension from the millisecond you set eyes on one another. Ever since I’ve been questioning if he is an alien sent from the planet Glorb, where they harvest human eyes to power their spaceship back home and leave in their place some genetically modified heart eyes because honestly, that’s the way you look at him.”

Phil found his mouth shaping an upturned smile, though he wasn’t sure if it was out of entertainment of fondness. PJ was an interesting guy if nothing else.

“No. I haven’t talked to him about it because I can tell he doesn’t feel the same, so I would rather we just be friends and I get to actually have him in my life than say something awkward and mess up the whole thing. Plus- it’s hard to explain, but I feel like he needs me. He just… there is something about him.”

“Hence the name ‘sad eyes’, I thought you would have realised that by now.”

That was PJ’s nickname for Dan. It wasn’t as if Phil hadn’t corrected him several hundred times. He just didn’t want to listen. Phil had just stopped trying to correct him. There was no use.

PJ shrugged his shoulders and went back to quietly scrubbing petrified and crusted milk from beneath the coffee maker. It was uncharacteristically quiet. That might be due to The Underground still being an utter wreck.  The news reported that there had been a burst in one of the pipelines, causing damage to several trains and platforms. They were up and running but some stations still weren’t accessible. As a summary, it had been a disaster to get anywhere in London for the past week. It wasn’t a surprise business was slow.

“Maybe he can’t get in because of the shitty traffic.” Phil just shrugged, wishing that was it.

They fell into a kind of muted silence, both watching people come and go past the shop front, every now and again having someone to serve. PJ must have grown tired of this silence, he often seemed the need to fill since and so he again began to speak.

“So, you said something odd happened when he was over, right? Care to digress. You know I’m all ears for odd happenings. I’m a part of every conspiracy theory fan page imaginable. Aliens? Real. The moon landing? Fake. 911? American government. I can go on.”

Phil wasn’t even surprised by this fact. PJ was the type of person people would describe as eccentric. He was an acquired taste, but Phil had found himself getting used to his friend’s odd ways.

“I’m serious Phil. You can tell me. Was it aliens? Area 51 shit weird or like… my house smells funny and I probably have a gas leak odd?”

Phil sighed and fought the urge to roll his eyes. God this was frustrating. He didn’t even know how to put the night’s experiences into perspective, let alone vocalise them. He thought of the thing, the black shadow creature, scratching at his roof.

“Area 51 weird,” Phil whispered, causing a manic kind of excited smile to cross over PJ’s lips.

“That sounds like my type of story- do go on.”

Phil felt his chest rise and fall in a heaving manner, his shoulders slumping over as he gave in to PJ and tried to construct a sound and logical way to describe what had happened the week before.

“While we were sleeping, there was this scratching on the roof…”

PJ held up a hand, then placed the other on his heart as if he were trying to prepare himself for a whirlwind tale. He looked like he was getting off on this. Sometimes Phil wondered why they were even friends. Though he would quickly remind himself of what a nice guy PJ was, he was odd, that was obvious, but he was loyal and his mind was an amazing place to dip into every now and again.

“Wait, don’t tell me. Was it an alien? A demon? Is the world ending? Have the aliens finally come to take us to their leaders? Why does the cool stuff happen to you?”

“Peej. Just let me talk, please? I have no clue what the thing was. None. It was… odd as hell.”

PJ seemed to mimic zipping his lips before his eyes widened attentively, showing him that he truly was very much looking forward to whatever the other lad was going to say.

“So… I tried to find a light to see whatever the hell was making the scratching noise and it was… I don’t even know how to describe it. It was just like a shadow.”

“So like shadow people?” PJ replied, seeming very level headed for the subject matter. Phil just shook his head.

“It wasn’t like a person. It was just… this black thing. I don’t know. I might have just been dreaming.”

“Don’t downplay this supernatural discovery… you could have demon aliens in your roof and you are saying it’s probably a dream? Damn. You don’t deserve to have cool stuff happen to you. Come on, what then?”

Phil found himself retelling the night’s events in odd, fractured pieces, as best he could. He could barely get two words in before PJ would interrupt on some other tangent, which he had to keep bringing back on track if he were ever to finish such a story. PJ seemed to spend hours on end verbalising theories aloud as Phil cleaned up the tables and made drinks for the customers, most of them looking to PJ as if he were crazy.

It wasn’t until half five that things got interesting. Phil was the first to notice the ghost of the boy he had grown close to over the past month, paler than usual, sleepier than usual. There was something about the image which made Phil feel the instant need for action. It wasn’t like any other time before, where he had seemed more like an overworked university student and less like a dead man walking. The shadows under his eyes were more than enough to give away that he had again been avoiding sleep, but there was more than that.

Phil turned to look over his shoulder seeing PJ already looking his way. His green eyes set in a silent manner of determination, for what reason, Phil was still unaware until PJ tilted his head in Dan’s direction. It was as if he was silently jeering the older boy on.

“Sad eyes looks like he needs you, take off early. The boss hasn’t been in to check up in days and I can hold up the front on my own. It’s not too hard when the shop’s a wasteland.”

Phil hesitated for a moment, on most days he wouldn’t have taken PJ up on his offer, but there was something seriously off about Dan, so he moved to the counter to take his order, already undoing his apron and planning in his head how long it would take to go out back and slip into his ‘civilian’ clothes.

 “Hey space cadet,” Phil muttered as Dan stood before him, mindlessly looking from the coffee board to Phil. He seemed too out of it to get the reference. It made Phil antsy.

“What can I get you? I was worried you were going to go and leave me high and dry.”

Dan’s eyes were slightly glazed as he looked to Phil. He could see the cogs in Dan’s brain turning to try and formulate an answer. Phil quietly waited, not knowing what to do in this situation. He could tell something was wrong. He just couldn’t work out what it was and how could he fix a problem that he didn’t even know existed?

“I want… just whatever coffee you have. I came to see you, actually. I felt bad for… I don’t know. Dropping off the face of the earth.”

Phil watched the boy struggle with his words in an odd manner, as if treading so lightly, he was afraid he would shatter something within Phil or possibly within himself. There was no real way to tell. Phil moved out from behind the counter and glanced over at PJ as if to double check that this was in fact okay. The other boy nodded and gave a small wave.

“Hey… I’m not mad at you Dan. I could never… well… maybe if you were a serial killer or something, but not for something this small.” Dan seemed to faintly smile and even tried to make a small joke.

“Serial with an S or C? I’ve seen you devour cereal so if it was either of us it would be you.”

Phil gave a faint smile and just nodded his head. He wasn’t about to argue with Dan, not even in the sarcastic or joking manner. He just seemed so off. He didn’t want to slip up. He hadn’t quite worked out how to manoeuvre Dan’s moods yet. It was early days in their friendship. If it had been PJ he would have known to whip out some obscure board game or put on an episode of Adventure Time and it would cure him nine times out of ten. Dan- that was different. He was still, for the most part, a grey area and that killed Phil because for some reason he felt as though he should know better.

“How about you and I go home Dan? Your home, I mean, you said you would show me about and you look…” Like death warmed up. Like a zombie. Like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed for ten months in a row. Like you’ve been dragged backwards through a briar patch.

“You look like you could use a little home time.” Phil knew how to sugar coat. He had a PHD in it.  The only problem was that Dan could tell when he was using it. He simply raised a brow and sighed, shoulders going slack. Phil knew he had said something wrong, but he didn’t know what the ‘right’ thing was to say. He went quiet and felt the silence between them grip like a vice.

“Okay,” Dan breathed eventually and Phil could finally breathe again, holding up a hand.

“I will go get my stuff then we are going to your place and you are going to talk to me about whatever is bothering you. I get if you don’t want to tell me everything…”

Phil was worried it would be something he was uncertain even he wanted to hear. God only knew what Dan’s nightmares could be about. Phil felt like he knew so much about who Dan was now, but as far as who Dan had been in the past, he had no clue. He never talked about it. It felt like Dan spent each moment of his life burying past versions of himself. Phil wondered if by finally seeing his house he might be able to get glimpses of those people.

Phil had moments in his life he didn’t like to talk about, everyone did, but he didn’t totally obliterate having a past. It seems like, other than his family, he had cut ties with everyone. On occasion, he would mention his mother or his father and once he said something about his younger brother. That was about all Phil knew. It was unsettling.

Phil was sick of watching, sick of seeing something behind Dan’s eyes and ignoring it. He was tired of knowing something was wrong and remaining idle as a stone building while watching its foundations shaking. If Dan needed someone to talk to, they would talk, if he needed to scream at, Phil would let it be him. If he just needed to sit quietly, maybe be held, Phil could do that too.

“I really don’t think you want to hear it,” Dan whispered in a matter of fact manner. Phil rolled his eyes.

“I do, no arguments Daniel.” Phil heard Dan stifle a laugh.

“What are you, Philip? My mother?”

“I guess since she isn’t here I will have to be the fill in, but more importantly, I’m your friend. Best friend actually… well, at least you’re mine-” He was then interrupted by PJ half yelling,

“Arsehole,” over the distance between them, causing Dan to chuckle quietly as well.

“You’re my best friend too,” Dan pointed out and shot Phil a real dimpled grin.

Best friend was somehow both amazing and painful.


	6. Fortune Favours the Future

**_Love must be reinvented._**

**_– Arthur Rimbaud_ **

Dan’s flat was significantly warmer than the outside air. Dan was thanking god that even if his life was falling apart his heating system was still going strong. He entered his front door, kicking off his shoes and watched as Phil did the same, the other boy’s blue eyes trailing around the interior of the flat, widening as if he were getting a phenomenal new insight into the inner workings of Dan’s brain.

His flat very much mimicked his own personality. For the most part, it was monochrome. White walls, grey carpet, black sofa. Art was splayed about the walls of the hallway and living room. They were beautiful, but for the most part minimalistic, like most of Dan’s set up. He had a few things lying about, box sets of DVD’s and books. At least there was some character there. Phil had almost been scared he was going to walk into a stark and sterile environment but he did see bits of Dan’s quirks. There were several anime figurines and candles lining the area over his fireplace and even a photo of himself and his family.

The photo seemed to be somewhat odd. It looked like it hadn’t been taken too long ago. Maybe a year or two. Phil guessed it was Dan’s birthday because he and both his parents were leaning over a cake and smiling broadly. Phil smiled faintly to himself and walked over to get a better look. Dan seemed to follow him with his eyes before quietly moving to stand next to Phil.

“I like your place,” He commented first and foremost. Dan could tell it wasn’t a lie because Phil’s tone held nothing but utter sincerity.

“So you aren’t repulsed by the idea of moving in?” Dan couldn’t help but quietly question as his eyes trailed over the family photo before he quickly turned away, feeling something cold trail over his frame. Phil was shaking his head.

“I feel like it almost needs me. I can brighten up the place a little.”

Dan smiled and rolled his eyes before moving into the kitchen and watching Phil follow.

“Do you want to have a tea or coffee?” He asked boiling the jug, clearly for a distraction and Phil simply placed a hand over the other boy’s for a millisecond to guide it away.

“I’ll make it. You just tell me where everything is. Can we talk? What’s bothering you so much? Don’t you dare say nothing because I know there is something. I might be Mr Brightside but I’m not stupid.”

Dan removed his hand and huffed in frustration, knowing that it was now very clear Phil wasn’t just going to leave this alone. He crossed the room and dug around for his tea and coffee before passing a small container over to Phil, humming quietly.

“I’m sorry… I was too busy singing Mr Brightside in my head to hear you.”

Whenever someone would ask Dan to open up he would cut them off with a snarky remark. He didn’t mean to do the same with Phil, but that was what he had been doing his whole life. It was just who he was. He was shut off. Isolated because of self-interest. If he didn’t think about the past, it couldn’t touch him.

“I’m serious Dan. Is it because we slept together... No- wait that sounded wrong. I mean… because you stayed the night?”

That took Dan off guard. Phil thought Dan had been avoiding him because they had shared a bed. Really? Dan could almost laugh out loud, but feared he would look like a maniac. Phil thought he had scared Dan off just by sharing a bed with him. Fuck. That was the only bit of the night that had been remotely enjoyable. He made a mental note to never vocalise that.

It had nothing to do with Phil. It was all about the dreams. The fucking horrible nightmares that had formed into another type of dream altogether. He had seen the train crashing. It was like he had been there. He dreamt it maybe an hour before it had even happened. Maybe it was coincidence, but it didn’t feel like it. This had happened before. He didn’t want to think about that.

There must have been a way Dan could have stopped it. There must have. He felt like it was his fault people had gotten hurt, people had died. It was the metaphorical trolley problem. By doing nothing he had let people die. He might as well have killed them. He felt his stomach drop and his breathing shallow at that. Phil seemed to take this as another bad sign, thinking that again Dan was freaking out due to something he had done.

“It didn’t mean anything, you know… Is it… did PJ mention I liked guys or something?”

Dan looked up at that, if he needed something to snap him out of his own head, that would do it.

“Because it’s really not that big of a deal… liking guys. I mean… It’s just a part of my personality and it doesn’t mean that I see you as anything other than my best friend because-”

Shit. Dan didn’t think he had ever heard Phil talking this fast or being so flustered. Was Phil really worried Dan would dump him as a friend just because he found out he liked guys and they had spent the night together in the same bed? Dan wasn’t a homophobic arse. He hated that Phil could even think he would react badly, so he did the only thing he could think of to get Phil to calm down. He placed both hands on Phil’s shoulder and hushed him before he could say anymore.

“Phil. For fuck's sake, calm down. D-did you just come out to me?” Dan raised a brow slightly and watched Phil’s face pale.

“So you didn’t already know?” Dan shook his head.

“So you weren’t worried about the bed thing?” Again, Dan shook his head and watched Phil go bright red.

“I couldn’t care less if you liked guys Phil. Fuck. You’re my best mate. I know we haven’t known each other for long, but really, I wouldn’t stop hanging out with you for such a stupid reason. I would still be your friend if you were sexually attracted to bloody kitchen chairs- not that it’s anywhere near the same thing as liking guys, but what I’m trying to say is that I’m pretty sure you’re stuck with me.”

Dan watched as Phil’s face instantly seemed to brighten. He felt the tension leave Phil’s shoulders and heard him audibly sigh out in relief. He felt himself sigh as well, moving over to give Phil a small hug, not sure if he was crossing a line, but when he felt Phil hold him tightly he knew it was the right choice.

In that moment Dan felt his heart lurch, ache and bend. It was this indescribable sensation, which he had never to this point in his life experienced. All he could smell was Phil’s cologne, his shampoo, his soap, his washing powder. Him. Dan held a little tighter and wished for this moment to be an eternal one. His eyes slipped shut.

“So you don’t care?” Phil asked again quietly.

“Nope,” Dan assured.

“Would you care if I had three legs?” Phil asked out of the blue, causing Dan to burst out laughing and shook his head.

“Would you care if I didn’t have a nose?” Again, Dan chuckled.

“Nope. In fact, it would make you look like Voldemort and he is quite an attractive guy.”

“What if I had grass for hair? Would you still be my friend?”

“Always.”

“What about if I had geese for feet?” Dan scoffed.

“Is that even humanly possible?”

Phil shrugged.

“Yes, even then.”

It was then that they both seemed to let silence take a hold of them. Time passed slowly but they didn’t move away from one another. They just stood there hugging. It was Phil who was the first to move after what seemed like an eternity.

“If it wasn’t me being…”

“Gay? Bi? Pan?” Dan tried to Phil in, mostly just for clarification. He wouldn’t mind the answer. It was just nice to know. Phil had only said that he liked guys. Phil seemed quietly surprised that Dan had even been knowledgeable enough on the topic to ask.

“I don’t really like saying I’m anything. I have been with guys and girls… I mean, honestly not with a lot of guys, or girls, but enough to know I like both but it’s not about that. I just like personalities over gender. It’s like gender doesn’t even come into the equation for me. So, I suppose pansexual fits best for that situation… you know what I mean?”

Dan didn’t know why, but something about Phil telling him this made him feel special, like Phil was sharing a proper secret with him. He liked it. He nodded all the while understanding where Phil was coming from when he said he just liked people. He also felt a small thudding in his chest almost as if it was responding to his words like, hey, if he likes personalities and the two of them have so much in common- fuck. Wait. Did Dan have a crush on Phil? Fuck. Shit.

He felt as though he knew the answer the second the question came to mind. Yes. He hadn’t had a crush on anyone since high school and he had only ever been with girls, sure maybe he had kissed a guy at a party once when he was fresh out of sixth form and it had been fine, he supposed but it was nothing that would have made him say he loved guys. He had thought male celebrities, videogame characters and people of the like, had been fit and even just shrugged it off. They were okay. He had thought girls were fine enough and on the small occasion had crushes on them or even had a few girlfriends in the past. He had never had a crush on a guy he knew, let alone one he was close with. His mind was already going a hundred miles an hour and Phil was looking at him expectantly.

“Anyway, if it wasn’t anything between the two of us, then talk to me… what’s going on?”

That was a whole other can of worms. He grew quiet for a long while, letting the silence envelop him for a moment.

“Let’s just finish making coffee and sit down. I’ll talk about it. I just don’t know where to start.”

***

The two boys sat in almost silence as they quietly drank their hot drinks. Dan was quietly trying to work out how to phrase his words in the best manner so that he didn’t sound utterly crazy.

“If I tell you, I’m almost sure you will think I’ve gone mental.”

Dan broke the silence between them and Phil looked up quietly, his brow quirking. He then, without another word set down his cup on Dan’s coffee table and position his body so he was truly facing Dan as if to show he was all ears.

“I’m sure whatever you have to say I’ve heard worse. What about the tea people? Or Janice the crazy cat lady? That is just the tip of the ice berg. I don’t think there is anything you can say at this point that will make me think you are crazy.”

Dan considered this. He remembered how Phil seemed to be the most open and least judgmental person on the entirety of the planet. You could tell the man you murdered someone and he could probably manage to keep a straight face and a good composition. Then again, that might as well be what Dan was telling him. In his own mind, he was as good as a murder.

“It wasn’t anything you did that night… I just- I had a dream about what happened in The Underground… like exactly, that just before it happened.”

Phil didn’t seem phased. It was as though there was more going on behind his eyes. He pursed his lips and nodded. At least he wasn’t laughing at Dan for being so shaken over such a small thing.

“And you feel like you could have done something about it, right?” Phil questioned, tilting his head ever so slightly and Dan nodded with surprise. He hadn’t thought Phil would catch on so quickly.

“Did I ever tell you my grandma was a psychic?” Dan raised a brow and shook his head ever so slightly.

“Well according to Lester family legend she was. She used to tell me all sorts of things like that when I was little. She would talk about having dreams before they happened and do tea leaf reading. Martyn would always say she was crazy but even when I got older I still believed her, the world’s a lot bigger than we think, you know?”

Dan found himself nodding slightly, cradling the dregs of his tea and mindlessly tilting it from one side to the next watching the left on the bottom stir. He didn’t think he was psychic. Honestly he was a lot more narrow-minded than Phil. He believed that everything that existed was all he could see. There were no transcendent veils of life and death. No afterlife. There was life then nothing and Dan had been okay with that.

“I don’t think that’s me,” He whispered back.

“Maybe not so much psychic, but what I’m saying is that I don’t think you’re crazy and it’s not your fault, even if you did dream it… I mean- you can’t very well stop a train, can you?”

Dan mulled that over for a moment before grinding his teeth and sighing quietly to himself. He didn’t know how he could have stopped it, but he didn’t even try. At least if he tried, then he could say he had done something. Instead he had remained idle. He might as well have let people die.

Phil could see the cogs in Dan’s brain turning and he quietly sighed, leaning over and taking the tea cup from Dan’s hand quietly. He was more shaken from their previous conversation. At least Dan didn’t seem to care. Things hadn’t suddenly grown odd. They were still sitting so close their thighs, hips, and legs still pressed together. It wasn’t a small sofa. They could have been worlds apart if they so chose but neither of them did.

“My grandma taught me how to read them. I can use my über psychic abilities to tell you the future.” Phil chuckled and Dan rolled his eyes.

“I don’t really believe in that,” He uttered honestly peering down into the cup, trying to see anything other than leaves and tea.

Phil seemed to furrow his brow as he considered the cup, leaning in closer and biting his lip as he seemed to struggle to recall what each symbol meant. Dan wasn’t going to argue anymore, if nothing else he supposed they wouldn’t have to go in deeper on the issue of his dreams. It was a rabbit hole, which he didn’t care to fall down tonight.

“See this?” Phil pointed to a cluster of leafs.

“That looks like a chair- that means an unexpected visitor.”

At that Dan leaned closer, finding himself propping in head on Phil’s shoulder without thinking in aid to get a better glance. He supposed he could see how the little configuration looked like a chair.

“Oh great. My anti-social arse loves visitors.” At that Phil chuckled.

“And this looks like a dog, I’m pretty sure that has something to do with a friend and good news but it’s at the bottom of the cup and I remember that means something a little different… I just can’t remember what.” Phil chuckled and shook his head.

“Your clairvoyance astounds me,” Dan scoffed, turning slightly to face Phil and watched Phil do the same. Their faces were inches away. Dan’s breath hitched as his mind questioned moving forward. They then both quickly turned to face away from one another, going bright red Phil spluttered and continued looking down at the cup.

“T-Then there is a heart… w-which is pretty self-explanatory really.” Phil fumbled.

“You know, love and all that. What I’m trying to say is that everything looks to be sunshine and rainbows. The future is bright.” Dan could tell Phil was just trying to make him feel better about this situation.

His eyes fluttered shut after a moment, his bones were tired. It was astounding how much the human body craved sleep, even if the conscious detested it. The blackened world began to grow ever closer as he felt his head begin to fall and suddenly he thumped down into something surprisingly tough. His eyes burst open yet again, realising he had begun to drift and had fallen against Phil’s chest and shoulder.

Dan looked up at Phil, his eyes slightly glossed over as he was still half waking. Something seemed to possess the older boy as Phil’s hand moved and brushed against Dan’s cheeks, his thumb running over the place under the other boy’s eye. There were dark purple marks from lack of sleep.

“You should sleep. I know you don’t want to, but you really should.”

Dan yawned quietly and shook his head. He was fine. He didn’t need to sleep. He didn’t need those nightmares again.

“I can stay if you want me too. How about I put on a film that we can watch together, if you fall asleep then I’ll stay and wake you up if you look like you’re having a nightmare, but if you don’t go to sleep, at least we got to sit together.”

Dan quietly decided it wasn’t the most unreasonable request. He bit his lip and dared himself to take a small leap of faith, resting down into the sofa and shyly leaning his head on Phil’s shoulder. It was comfortable, though slightly bony. It still felt like home. These were all feelings Dan knew were better not to be felt, but for this moment in time, he didn’t care. Just for now he wanted to sit with his head on Phil’s shoulder and watch a movie with him.

“I guess that sounds like a plan Philly.” Phil screwed up his nose before chuckling and settling back into Dan, the base of his spine digging against the backs of Dan’s hand. He couldn’t even recall when he had positioned it there.

“It sounds like a plan.”


	7. The Most Beautiful Falsehood

**_For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream._ **

**_\- Vincent van Gogh_ **

It began as it always did. It was the familiar comfort of Dan’s favourite nightmare. It was white walls. It was dying flowers. It was death. At least he has become accustomed to this kind of quiet torture. People were dying around him. He could hear it and yet he could do nothing.  He still couldn’t move. He just had to live within the loop of the dream until it changed or he awoke. To his surprise, it was the former.

The white walls fell away and instead were replaced with the pale blue of the morning sky, nothing else, just the sky and fading stars. He lay there, in the sky, floating as if he weighed nothing at all.  It was an unsettling kind of beauty. The kind of beautiful which made one’s heart stir, but their head scream in warning. Something so beautiful shouldn’t exist. Purity was always a falsehood. Nothing could ever truly be pure. Newborn babies still bore impurities, freckles and birthmarks. Even the most beautiful of art still had brush strokes. Nothing could ever really be pure.

The sky could never be as blue as it was, or the fading stars such a shade of indescribable beauty. It was like pastel purple and faded yellow melded together to create a new colour, one that most men could scarcely imagine. There was no way Dan could be floating in the sky like a weightless object. Maybe this was what it was like for normal people to dream. Beauty and flying. It felt more than Dan deserved and he was unsure as to why.  Why was this suddenly happening? He almost missed the white room because he knew what to expect. Here anything could happen.

That was when he felt his body drop.

It was like all the invisible strings holding him high up in the sky gave way and let him fall. He fell through the sky with such nauseating speed his vision began to blur as tears began to spill from his eyes. They seemed to fall upwards as he continued to drop, before they hovered back into place, floating as if they were filled with helium, opposed to water. It felt like this falling would go on forever like he would never have the quiet finality of hitting the ground.

Once this thought entered Dan’s head it was countered with the ever-encroaching view of water. It was the rough and blackened ocean of the English seaside. He felt his stomach bottom out as his body slammed against the watery surface. It was nothing but pain as the icy water wrapped itself around Dan, tangling around him and squeezing. He was left gasping, water pouring into his lungs, blurring his vision holding his body. For a second he thought he might die, but something in the back of his mind seemed to remind him he was dreaming. It was then he realised, this wasn’t the first time he had this dream.

***

Phil had decided that nothing in his life was ever meant to be one of two things; the first being simple and the second being ordinary.

Dan had fallen asleep on his shoulder within twenty minutes of the film beginning. Phil was quietly thankful because at least that meant Dan would get some rest, this lack of sleep couldn’t be good for anything and it was beginning to show in the semi-permanent black lines under the other boy’s eyes or his constant look of daze. At first, Dan had just laid against his shoulder quietly, his chest rising and falling slowly as the hours fell away and Phil continued to watch the movie they had placed on mindlessly, six became seven and soon ticked over until eight and nine at night. The warm weight of Dan’s body leaning full force against Phil began to grow uncomfortable, his neck and shoulder seizing up and so, Phil quietly moved to lay them both down on the sofa.

This proved even more difficult than when the two had tried to squeeze into Phil’s single bed. Eventually, with a quiet huff, Phil settled for laying down and letting Dan lay, for the most part, on top of him. It wasn’t overly comfortable but at the same time, it was cosy, warm and right. That was when things grew odd again.

As he felt himself slowly beginning to drift off, he felt the chill in the room rise and for a moment he held his breath, gnawing down into his bottom lip as he dared to open his eyes and was faced with the ever-growing swarm of blackened ghouls. He remained quietly calm as he felt his hands tighten around Dan’s frame.

“Please go away,” Phil, ever the polite young man, even when in the presence of possible monsters or aliens from another dimension, asked.

The things didn’t seem to comply, but at the same time, none seemed to threaten either. They felt neither good nor evil, just… there. There was a saying about when you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you and Phil wasn’t sure if the same thing complied here. The faceless black shapes did seem to stare back at him in some way or another, but he wasn’t sure if they understood. He sure as hell knew he didn’t.

If this were a novel and Phil were meant to be the protagonist, he would have imagined he would have understood by now, would have worked it out. He also would have been braver. He wasn’t some storybook hero like the ones out of fiction. He was simply a normal enough man, placed in a situation which was anything but normal.

“We are trying to sleep and it is very impolite of you to drop in like this,” Phil heard his own voice shaking and watched as Dan curled closer into his body, his normal straight hair curled ever so slightly at the ends. Phil had to resist the urge to reach down and tousle his hair. He reminded himself they were friends and nothing more. Friends who were stuck in the oddest of situations.

None of the creatures moved, they just blankly floated about in the same space, neither coming closer nor further. Phil found himself groaning quietly, about to reach for the light on his phone and make them go, seeing as the creatures didn’t seem to fancy the light.

“What do you want?” He tried again and got a response, for the first time.

One of the blackened spectres lurches forward, sounding like the rush of the wind in the eye of a typhoon. It sent Dan’s teacup, which had been precariously placed at the end of his coffee table, flying and landing just in front of where Dan and Phil lay on the sofa. Through the shattered pieces of glass, he could see the tea leaves had formed a shape.

A skull.

Phil didn’t have to be an expert to know that was a bad sign and with that, the creatures were gone, as if sucked back into whatever abyss they had come from. Just gone. Phil tried his best not to turn pale as a sheet as he stared at the scene with quiet rebellion. Whatever these things were, if they were trying to scare him, they would have to try a little harder.

***

It was the wrapping of knuckles against Dan’s front door which woke Phil. He figured it was the postman, or possibly one of Dan’s friends he had forgotten were coming over. Dan was still fast asleep and so Phil quietly moved out from under the other boy, touching his cheek and sighing quietly. He had liked the feeling of sleeping with his friend more than he knew he should. He brushed off the thought and tried to locate the bag he had brought from work, luckily finding his glasses so he wouldn’t have to stumble blindly through Dan’s flat.

He quietly jogged downstairs to get the door, swinging it open and coming face to face with a woman twice his age and almost half his height. For a second he was puzzled before his mind placed two and two together, realising he had seen this face before, in a picture, which sat atop of Dan’s fireplace. This must be his mother.

Phil was suddenly hyper aware of what this must look like. He might be considered a little innocent but he wasn’t whole heartedly naïve. He was standing in the doorway of Dan’s flat at an early hour in the morning, hair, which could only be described as a bedhead and dawning tracksuit pants and a baggy shirt. It was clear he had slept over. Great. He was meeting Dan’s mother as ‘the strange man at her son’s door’. Great first impression. Phil didn’t know exactly why his aim was to make a lasting first impression after all he and Dan were just friends. That was all. Friends didn’t have to impress other friend’s parents.

“Why hello, I’m sorry I think I must have got the wrong address,” She had already started to back away when Phil found himself calling out,

“Wait! You are looking for Dan, right? He’s still asleep upstairs but I can make you a tea or something if you want to come in.”

This seemed to make the woman pause, her eyebrow shooting up in an inquisitive manner. Phil then realised he hadn't  bothered to introduce himself. He shot his hand out in an awkward manner as if to go for a handshake. He always hated meeting people in a formal manner. He never knew how to act and suddenly he felt nervous, butterflies springing about in his stomach.

“I’m Phil, by the way. Dan and I were watching a film last night and we must have drifted off,” He had chuckled awkwardly, feeling as though he needed to explain himself. However, at stating his name there was a flicker of recognition on the woman’s face and she smiled faintly nodding as Phil stepped to one side.

“You said he was asleep? That’s good. The last time he talked to me he wasn’t doing so well.”

At least Phil didn’t have to lie about Dan’s state of being to his mother. He was glad the two seemed to be open with one another because at least that meant Dan had someone to talk to when he was busy shutting Phil out because of his twisted dreams of death. Phil couldn’t help but wonder if the strange creatures and Dan’s dreams somehow intertwined. He pushed that thought to the back of his mind as he began to ascend the stairs.

“Yeah, he hasn’t been sleeping for the past few days, but we’re working on it.”

Phil questioned his own wording for that one. ‘We’. It made the whole statement sound finite. He supposed if he were moving in with Dan, as a friend it was his job to try and help with… whatever was going on.

He quietly led her upstairs as the woman seemed to be boring a hole into the back of his head. He quietly opened the door to the living room and gestured to a sleeping Dan, his mouth hanging slightly agape while his brows drew together. Phil bit his lip, knowing full well that was the type of face Dan pulled when he was having a nightmare.

He was debating about whether to say something or leave Dan when he started to breathe out short, gasping breaths in his sleep, sounding something like sobs. His mother was about to step in but Phil seemed to get in first, unsure of how he had even managed to move so fast. He was beside Dan in a heartbeat, quietly placing his hand on the other man’s cheek and stroking his hair, knowing that the action seemed to settle Dan down.

“Hey, it’s just a dream. You’re dreaming Dan. I’m here. It’s okay. You’re okay.” His quiet words seemed to settle the other boy for a moment before his brow furrowed and his eyes slowly fluttered open, looking red and swollen confirming that he had been crying.

“Shit sorry.” Was the first thing Dan uttered as he awoke before something beyond Phil seemed to catch his eye and then they both swelled wide.

“Mum?” He gasped, shooting upright on the sofa, almost flinging himself off with the swiftness of his action.

“What in the ever loving fu-”

“Language Daniel,” His mother cut in before he could continue.

“You can’t language me, I’m twenty-five.”

“You’re my son, I can say as I like. Your father is in London for a business trip and I figured I would stop by to say hello to you. I didn’t know you would have a visitor.”

Dan looked wide-eyed from Phil to his mother and Phil awkwardly shifted from one foot to the next, feeling slightly out of place, but at the same time he would feel rude if he just decided to get up and go, so he quietly cleared his throat and stood from where he was crouched over Dan’s frame.

“I’ll go make some tea,” He breathed and darted off into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.

For a moment silence was left in his wake as Dan looked to his mother for a moment slightly wide-eyed. For someone who hadn’t been doing anything he somehow felt very guilty. Not only that, but he wasn’t able to shake the horror of his dream.

“I should have called,” His mother began and Dan groaned faintly, burrowing his face into the sofa cushion before placing it down again and standing, moving over to hug his mother tightly, after all, it had been a long while since he had last seen her.

“You should have, but I’m still glad you came… even if you did traumatise Phil,” Dan scoffed and sighed shaking his head to himself. His mother’s expression seemed to change.

“You know you could have told me what was going on between you and him. I was suspecting something when you were telling me about him the other day. I love you no matter what, you know that. I am happy to see you with someone that clearly cares for you and wants to make you happy. That’s all I've ever wanted for you and especially with everything that happened with your brother, you have been cutting everyone off. It’s just nice to see you letting someone in.”

In that moment, it took Dan’s brain a little too long to catch up to what his mother was really saying and once it did, it hit him like a tonne of bricks. He mother thought he and Phil were together. As in a couple. He practically choked on air as he fumbled around in his mind for some kind of explanation. It shouldn’t be hard. He could just say it wasn’t that way between them because it wasn’t. The only footfall was that maybe Dan wanted it to be like that, but he was too much of a complicated mess to want Phil to have to deal with. Maybe he wanted to be with Phil like that. Shit. Fuck.

“Mum we aren’t- he and I we are just… I’m not.” Dan could feel his face growing hotter by the minute, he was saved (not for the first time) by Phil Lester, walking back into the room juggling three mugs, while kicking the door open with his foot. He offered Dan a sympathetic smile and Dan quietly mirrored it, hoping it wouldn’t show to be too tight lipped or awkward. His mother looked between them as Phil quietly sat down beside Dan, handing him his tea and quietly warning him about the temperature of the mug. Dan thanked in in a mumble and fixated his eyes to the bottom of the teacup. He then found the corners of his mouth turning up slightly.

“I guess you were right about the visitor last night,”

That was one of Phil’s predictions, wasn’t it? It was a lucky guess, but still, a very lucky guess. He had spoken just loud enough for Phil to hear. Phil had turned to him and had given the ghost of a smile, his head nodding ever so slightly.

“I might be psychic after all then,” Dan rolled his eyes and whispered back,

“Lucky guess, you know I don’t believe in that.”

“My psychic grandmother is rolling in her grave.”

Dan chuckled faintly and looked over at Phil simply shaking his head before turning his attention back to his mother. He sipped his tea and made small talk. There honestly wasn’t too much she didn’t know due to the fact they talked to one another most days on the phone. There were no secrets between the two of them, okay, besides one. It was a fairly big one involving death and dreams, but he would prefer not to be placed in a psychiatric ward, and so he kept that little piece of information to himself.

Before Dan knew it, his mother and Phil had sparked up a conversation and he, for the most part, could fall into the background, just nodding when he needed to or humming yes or no when it seemed appropriate. He tuned back in when his mother leant over to show Phil her phone, flicking through an array of old photos which caused Dan to turn a bright red and Phil to smile.

“You were really cute as a baby,” Phil found himself laughing and Dan was quick to shoot back,

“I know, what happened right?” He tried to cover up his own embarrassment.

He could feel himself shrinking further and further into the sofa, wishing it would swallow him whole as Phil continued to scroll through the photos and paused pointing to two young boys.

“Is that you and your brother?” He asked quietly and Dan felt himself go slightly stiff.

“Yep,” His answer was short and sharp, giving nothing more away.

Phil seemed to understand that it was a sensitive topic and moved on to watch a video of Dan when he was younger, tapping away at a keyboard.

“Always the piano protégée?” He questioned curiously, though was answered with a shake of the head.

“Hardly,” Dan whispered at the same time as his mother responded,

“He has always been very good. I just wish he would still let me hear him play.”

Phil raised a brow at Dan and bumped his shoulder against the other boy’s in a quiet proposition.

“He is still really good. You should go watch him play. I’ve seen him most nights. He’s amazing, way better than anything I could do.”

Dan was about to argue when he remembered one night where Phil had stayed after work and Dan had tried to teach him how to play Chopsticks while everyone else finished packing up for the night. His skill level, Dan quickly learned, was nothing above playing Hot Cross Buns. It had still been a good night.

Phil held the conversation for several more moments before he looked at the time as if quietly deciding he had overstayed his welcome and stood, handing the phone back and giving Dan’s shoulder a small squeeze.

“Well, I have work this afternoon, so I should be off, it was really nice meeting you Mrs Howell,” Phil spoke in an overly polite manner, sounding more like a school child who was about to get scolded by a teacher as opposed to an adult speaking to another adult.

“Goodbye love, nice to meet you too.”

It wasn’t until the door shut that Dan’s mother turned her attention back to him and shot him another raised brow as she questioned,

“Are you sure you two aren’t together?”


	8. Simultaneous Truth is Eternal

**_“There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.”_ **

**_― Alan Moore_ **

Dan Howell’s London flat was deathly quiet for the first time that day. His mother had left several minutes prior and now he was left alone, again. He was in his dark room with his blackened thoughts and for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be alone, if he wanted to be lonely.

Someone was reading his thoughts because there was the banging of knuckles on his front door. Dan found himself leaping up from the sofa with slightly too much enthusiasm. He had a hunch who it would be, or at least he knew who he hoped it would be. Quietly he hoped his mother hadn’t just forgotten something and was coming back.

The wooden frame of Dan’s door almost rocked off the hinges at the utter speed and strength his new-found enthusiasm brought. There was a snowbird at his door, looking pale blue from the chill in the air. Dan didn’t know how he could go from spending a week apart from the other boy, voluntarily, without a stir, but now could barely last a few hours. Maybe that was how Phil had felt when Dan was shutting him out. Maybe he was selfish to expect he got better than he gave. Then again, maybe he was growing to be too co-dependent, maybe he should spend some time shrinking back into himself before he let himself get too close.

“Hey,” Dan breathed, trying to sound both impassive and yet still convey this visit was a welcome one. Phil seemed to be trying to read Dan’s face. It seemed like he was failing.

“I have an idea,” Phil uttered, offering the smile Dan hadn’t. This smile dragged one out of Dan because his willpower was never strong enough to withstand whatever effect Phil seemed to have on him. It wasn’t fair. Cold and uninvolved was Dan’s aesthetic and he was miserably failing at it.

“You have an idea about what?” Dan questioned, craning his neck slightly as he saw someone sitting in the driver seat of the car Phil had emerged from.

Dan’s mind went to the worst-case scenario- well, it was a fairly average case scenario for the average person, but it unsettled Dan. There was a man, one Dan had seen several times with Phil behind the counter at the café. Maybe it was Phil’s boyfriend. He said he liked guys, didn’t he? Dan still couldn’t fathom why his own mind placed this as a worst-case scenario. He filed that into the _suppress and forget_ part of his mind, hoping it would never rear its ugly head again.

“I have an idea about how you and I are going to spend our night, I would tell you, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure you would either say no or something along the lines of, ‘this is a ridiculous idea, blah, blah, I don’t believe in… blah.’ So tonight, you are going to have to trust me.”

Dan wasn’t good at trusting anyone, not really, but somehow this was another one of many rules Dan had set himself, which Phil seemed to be the exception for. He couldn’t help but look from Phil, the frozen snowbird at his doorstep, to the other man craning his head outside the car.

“I also brought my friend PJ because he has a car and is actually good at driving, since I figured The Underground might be a no go. Also, this is more his area of expertise than mine.”

Dan was surprised at how his shoulders sagged in relief having been given the information that the two were ‘friends’. The second half of his words took Dan off guard.

“You told him about…” Dan didn’t know how to finish his sentence, about his weird dreams. He had only ever told Phil that, if Phil had told someone else, it almost felt like he was breaking some kind of trust. He watched as Phil’s head quickly jerked in a ‘no’ motion.

“I didn’t tell him that. He and I had just gotten to talking about some odd things and somehow something along the lines of this came up.”

Dan had no clue how something like his situation had come up in common conversation, though knowing the types of people Phil tended to mingle with he wasn’t all that surprised. Dan looked to the man again, seeing his fingers drumming on the steering wheel, his face bubbling with excitement. Where the bloody hell were they going? 

“If I don’t like wherever the hell you are dragging me to then we don’t have to stay, right?”

“Right, I’m not kidnapping you. Think of it as… I don’t know. A late-night adventure.”

From the car, PJ let out a small whooping sound. One of excitement. Maybe this guy really was mental. Phil tilted his head to indicate they should be hopping in the car, the other man was clearly getting antsy. Phil opened the door for Dan and this was another thing which seemed to take him by surprise. Phil was too pure to be true.

Dan slid into the back seat and watched as Phil walked around hopping into the other side, leaving shotgun open and PJ in the driver’s seat. Dan couldn’t help but think it was a little odd, but he didn’t question it. He was suddenly nervous without knowing why or even if he needed to be. For all he knew, they were plummeting into the unknown to- summon a demon or something of the like. Not that Dan even believed in that type of stuff. The idea just creeped him out. The car engine revved to a start and lurched out into the late-night London street, before almost immediately coming to a standstill again. London had shit traffic no matter what time of night.

“Gentlemen, thank you for choosing to ride in PJ’s wild rocket. Exits are anywhere your mind could imagine and it is recommended you keep your hands and feet in the vehicle at all times. Also, no canoodling in the backseat, the leather is new.”

At the last comment, Dan had never seen Phil such a bright shade of pink in all his life and Dan felt himself doing the same. He was about to say that it wasn’t like that between them but it seemed useless.

They moved through London at a snail’s pace, seeming to dip and dive through places Dan didn’t even know existed. After about half an hour the traffic finally began to flow steadily. That was when Dan realised they were leaving London altogether.

“Just promise me one thing,” Dan whispered softly as he looked over his shoulder at Phil, who had previously been admiring the landscape through the passenger window.

“You aren’t taking me out here to murder me, right?” He chuckled nervously and Phil gave a soft smile as if to try and assure the other lad.

“No, that wasn’t tonight’s plan,”

PJ also looked back over his shoulder for a second before turning his attention back to the road.

“Plus, if we were going to kill someone I think we would have to formulate a better plan. I mean taking someone in the middle of nowhere to do it is so… overdone. You know what I mean?” PJ then shot Dan a smile as if to quietly assure he was joking. Dan just nodded and went back to mindlessly looking out the window, listening to the mumbled radio running through old, late night, R&B tunes. It wasn’t exactly Dan’s style but it filled the silence.

***

By the time the car pulled to a stop Dan was unsure of what town they were in. It was a quiet countryside place. They had only driven past a handful of houses and a corner store. Now they were standing in front of a three-story building, the only other building in the street looked to be a charity shop. Dan had no clue why they were here. He looked to Phil and inclined his brow.

“This is the place,” Phil assured.

Dan was about to ask more, but as Phil climbed from the car there was a glowing neon sign in the front window of the shop. It simply reads,

_Psychic_

Dan fought and eye roll. Phil had predicted right when he had proposed Dan wouldn’t go if Phil had told him where they were heading in the first place. This was ridiculous, but he supposed he didn’t have anything to lose.

“Aren’t there any whack jobs in London?” Dan’s ever-present sarcastic demeanour shone through.

Phil didn’t let it phase him. He had already learned not to take what Dan said to heart. He was lacking any proper filter between brain and thought. He couldn’t hold his morbid stream of thought to himself. Misery loves company. Maybe that was why Dan was always bad in social situations, people never knew how to take him. Phil, on the other hand, seemed to understand completely.

“Technically there were seven, but none of them is any good. Well… not really. This lady knew my gran and sometimes PJ comes to visit her whenever he needs some odd props. She’s nice.”

Dan didn’t even want to know what ‘props’ meant or why Phil’s workmate and friend felt the need to drive several hours just to get them. PJ had been already speaking when Dan decided he didn’t want to know.

“I make short films. Phil and I did some courses together in university. Last week I was making a short film for this competition in London about a wizard who had a problem with fast growing facial hair and I needed some props. Eyes of newt, bottled frog’s legs… all that stuff. This lady hooked me up.” 

Dan raised a brow at Phil and saw Phil do the same back to him, before rolling his eyes. Somehow, in the short time, the two had known one another, they had mastered the act of silently speaking.

‘Is this guy seriously your friend?’ Dan’s eyes questioned.

‘What did you expect?’ Phil’s silent reply.

‘True.’

Another eye roll from Phil.

‘Don’t judge, he’s nice.’

Dan shrugged his shoulders.

‘I won’t. I wasn’t.’

Eyebrow raise.

‘You were.’

Dan scoffed.

‘Shut up.’

PJ had continued the conversation, but it was clear neither Dan or Phil had been paying attention. The cold air was beginning to nip at Dan’s flesh when the three finally decided to enter. Dan hadn’t thought the place would be open at such an hour of the night, but the two other boys strolled in before him, looking as if it was nothing. They hadn’t knocked or checked the opening hours. Dan followed several steps behind feeling the pang of something like jealousy. The other boys seemed close and something about that unsettled Dan.

The place wasn’t exactly how Dan would expect, there weren’t crystal balls aligning every bench top, nor were there black cats or satanic symbols. It looked more like an old curiosity shop than a physic. There was an old woman, hunched in the corner of the room in a rickety wooden chair leafing through what looked like a Mills and Boon novel.  Her glasses were comically large and rounded, but nothing about her seemed to scream, ‘old, crazy lady’, as Dan would have expected. She was just a woman.

Upon all three boys entering the place a bell began to ring and the woman looked up, smiling widely at the three with slightly crooked teeth. She stood, placing the book face down before coming over to them opening her arms widely.

“Well if it isn’t my favourite young men.” She cooed hugging both Phil and PJ before looking at Dan.

“Oh, my word. Quite the pickle you have found yourself in, young man. Such a sad state of affairs.”

Dan took a few seconds to realise she was speaking to him. He was unsure what about. Phil looked over at Dan, his brows drawing together in a quiet curiosity while PJ seemed to have already darted off to look around the shop, picking up bits and bobs to inspect.

“I… don’t know what you mean.” Dan answered, fully ready to hear her reply with something crazy like, ‘it’s in the stars’ or ‘a dead relative is speaking to me from beyond the grave’. The second option made Dan’s hair stand on end. Instead, she answered,

“Of course you don’t love.”

Dan looked at Phil again, who to his surprise was still glancing over at him, as if quietly trying to work out how he would react before realising he hadn’t made any introductions.

“Dan, this is…” Phil didn’t have a chance to finish.

“You can call me Dorothy. I have… I suppose a stage name of Madam Mim. People seem to think you are a more legitimate psychic if you have a ridiculous name but something tells me you are more a man of scientific endeavours.”

Dan was quietly impressed, but not convinced, though he found himself smiling at the fact that she didn’t seem to hold up any front with him.

“So you based your psychic persona off the name of a Disney character?” He held back a laugh.

“It was Phil’s idea actually.” This time Dan did laugh. Of course, it was Phil.

“I was ten,” Phil breathed defensively, his face turning a shade of pink.    

She looked between the two boys and gave a kind of knowing smile, one Dan wasn’t sure of the meaning behind but then her eyes grew sad.

“What about I take you to the back room and we can talk more comfortably and confidentially there Daniel.” Dan screwed up his nose at the last part then bit his lip looking over at Phil.

“Can Phil come too?” Dorothy smiled faintly and nodded.

“It that’s what you are comfortable with. Phil can come too.”

And he was, so he did.

***

The back room in question was simply that, a small room behind a shut door with a table in the middle and a set of chairs either side. The walls were mostly blank and the place smelled mostly of incense and scented candles. Dan was surprised to find that Phil did most of the talking for him. It wasn’t that Dan was shy or needed Phil to retell Dan’s nightmares for him, but he was quietly grateful he had. The woman took notes, hardly ever looking up. When Phil finished talking, she placed her pen down, looked up from her notes and simply nodded.

“You don’t believe in this do you, Daniel?” She asked Dan quietly who simply shrugged.

“Not really,” He didn’t want to be rude, but he also didn’t want to lie.

“I don’t blame you, but let me put it in a way that might be easier for you to comprehend. I think I understand your situation.”

Dan moved slightly closer out of pure intrigue and felt Phil do the same. The woman flipped to a new page in her notebook and began to draw, swiftly etching out a sketch. It was a circular pattern and it took Dan a while to realise that it looked like a snake or a dragon. One end connects with the other, the sketch eating itself. Dan knew the symbol as an ouroboros.

“If you are more a man of logic, then think of it this way, time is cyclical."

As she spoke the woman continued to scribble over the circle, over and over, etching the line blacker.

"I’m sure you’ve heard that theory. Everything that has happened, has happened before and will happen again, that the past, present and future are all simultaneous.”

Dan groaned internally. He was familiar with it from the times he would lay awake at night, worrying about things he couldn’t change. The times when he didn’t sleep. He would think of the world, about time, about death. He hated how quiet things got when the lights went out and he had time to think of things like that because that meant that every mistake he had ever made was still happening. In this very moment, he was doing the worst thing he had ever done and every moment after this it would still be happening. He would still be running. He would still get there too late. He would still have dreamt of it happening. He would make that same mistake over and over again, that one, in particular, stuck in his mind.

“I’m familiar with it,” He whispered faintly while Phil remained quiet, seeming to be listening intently.

“Most people only ever see now, but imagine, if you were able to see more than just your moment in time. That’s what your dreams are like, right?”

Dan quietly nodded his head, for some odd reason he felt a chill run down his spine. He had a feeling he knew where this was going, but he wished he didn’t. This was bullshit. He tried to tell himself it was just an old lady, gone off her rocker, spouting nonsense, but the thing was, it wasn’t nonsense. It was logical, in an odd way and that was even worse. If she was crazy it meant Dan had nothing to worry about.

“So… Is it like Doctor Manhattan from Watchmen? How he can see every moment of his life at once,” Phil offered quietly and at the slightly nervous words Dan couldn’t help but smile at how Phil’s mind worked.

“Yes, exactly like that,” Dorothy interjected and at the look of surprise both Dan and Phil gave her she continued,

“What? Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I can’t be knowledgeable about pop culture. But yes. That is exactly what I mean and it’s actually a fairly helpful analogy because he says somewhere that everything in life is predetermined, even if he can see it all- even how he responds to it. You can see bad things happening before they happen and then feel bad for not stopping them. But what if you can’t stop them?”

Dan fell silent, his mind going a hundred miles an hour, flying a hundred miles away, he felt sick to his stomach because this time he was sure this woman knew. He didn’t know how but she did. Her next words only confirmed it.

“That’s what’s troubling you, isn’t it? You saw something happen before it happened, yet you couldn’t stop it and now you feel like it’s your fault, but it wasn’t the strangers. Just seeing you, I feel like I’m drowning. It was your brother, wasn’t it?”

Dan was pale as a sheet, his jaw locked into something like a snarl as he quickly stood up, his hands slamming down on the wooden table before him, feeling a rage inside him, which he hadn’t previously known existed. He looked to Phil, seeing his blue eyes swollen with both fear and sorrow. Phil was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid. He could place two and two together.

“I’m leaving. I’ll wait for you in the car,” Dan snarled through gritted teeth, spinning on his heels and practically running out into the main room seeing PJ poking around through a draw of assorted shiny objects. He didn’t spare him a second glance.

He stalked out into the night air, feeling the cold air hit him like a wall of clarity. It melted his anger and left him with only sorrow. He clambered into the back seat of the car, thanking the god he didn’t believe in. He was so numb he didn’t realise how much time had passed until the other door to the backseat opened and Phil climbed in. He hadn’t realised he was shaking until Phil held his body to steady him. He hadn’t realised he was crying until Phil quietly offered him his coat sleeve as a tissue. He looked to Phil’s hands and for the first time, he saw them. Again, he went pale. Again, he started shaking. Again, he started crying.

He wished he would stop realising things.


	9. Sea Loops

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: The title of this chapter is based on a song of the same name (Sea Loops by Neat Beats) which I listened to while writing a fair portion of this chapter. If you are looking for something to listen to while reading this chapter it does a good job of setting up the ambience of the first few scenes.

**_I'm not living, I'm just killing time_ **

**_\- Radiohead_ **

_Dan was sixteen. Sixteen? Seventeen? Seventeen._

_Dan was seventeen._

_He had awoken from a dream so vivid he could scarcely pull apart what was real and what was fabricated. This dream had seemed so real, even upon waking._

_He had seen a boy, several years younger than himself. He was lucky to be twelve. He had seen this boy, in particular amongst the group because he had lived with this boy for most of his life. This was his brother._

_The group of boys and his brother had been talking at the rockiest bit of the foreshore. Dan had grown up in a place close to the sea. He would often drive his younger brother the half hour it took to get from his house to the ocean since his friends seemed to always be messing about there. For lack of a better word, he had always been the adult supervisor. He was the older brother. That was his job. Adrien was talking with his friends, laughing and doing whatever it was twelve-year-olds did, until he wasn’t._

_Dan couldn’t recall how things had gotten from point A to point B.  This often happened in dreams but something about this shift unsettled him. Dan was now surrounded by water, the ebb and flow of the sea crushing his body against the rocks, stirring him this way and that. He felt like he was dying, but that didn’t matter. Tucked in his arms was a smaller boy, pale blue as the sky. Dan could see his brother’s face, eyes open wide and unblinking. His heart dropped and he awoke._

_He saw that same younger brother standing before him, leaning against the doorway, his face seeming bored and impatient. That must have been a Howell family trait._

_“Get your lazy arse out of bed. You promised you would give me a ride to the beach this morning,” His younger brother, Adrien spoke, brow raised slightly._

_Dan sat in bed, the dream still clung heavily to his skin. He had never had such a dream before. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something really bad was going to happen if he did take his brother, as he promised._

_“I know I did, but something came up. Sorry bud, not today.” Dan didn’t know why he said that. Nothing had come up. He just couldn’t bring himself to take his brother after his dream._

_“But you promised,” Adrien argued his jaw squaring and balling his hands into fists._

_“That doesn’t matter, I’m your older brother. I don’t have to do shit for you,” Dan was arguing for the other boy’s own good, whether he liked it or not._

_“I hate you,” The younger boy hissed kicking the leg of his desk chair, causing a stack of books to fall to the ground with a thud before storming out of the room._

_Dan had groaned and flopped down onto the bed, covering his face. He didn’t want to get lectured by his mother for not taking his brother or have Adrien tell him what a shitty brother, he was so he hauled up in his room watching Youtube videos, playing his keyboard and procrastinating about doing his maths homework. It was past noon when he finally decided to emerge from his bat cave._

_At first, the house seemed too quiet. His father was at work and his mother was quietly leafing through bills at the kitchen counter. Adrien was nowhere to be seen. Dan’s brows drew into a furrow. He quietly looked about the house, the feeling of dread settling into the pit of his stomach._

_“Mum?” He breathed softly when after ten minutes of searching his younger brother was nowhere in sight. His mother looked up and tilted her head in questioning._

_“Have you seen Adrien?”_

_“Yeah, he and Jack were riding together down to the beach. Jack’s older sister picked him up about an hour ago.”_

_Dan’s face went pale and before he knew it, he had his car keys in one hand and his coat in the other, rushing out the door before his mother even had time to question the insanity of his actions._

_***_

_The drive seemed longer than Dan thought humanly possible. All the air in the car was suddenly stuffy and humid, despite the chilly spring air outside. By the end of the drive, his knuckles were pale white from his too tight grip on the wheel. The whole way there he was telling himself he was crazy. He shouldn’t get so hooked up on a dream. It didn’t mean anything._

_He clambered out of his car and made his way to the foreshore, seeing the cluster of boys talking, jumping across from one rock to the other, skipping stones and trying to show each other up._

_One of the older boys, one of about fourteen made the great leap from the rocky foreshore to a lone rock about five feet out into the sea. Adrien had always been a sheep when it came to dangerous activities, always following the crowd, so of course, he tried to follow. What came next came in slow motion._

_Dan watched his brother’s foot barely make the stone and slip, his ankle going one way while his body went the other. He slipped into the choppy water and let out a cry as the current quickly dragged him out further and threw his body repeatedly against the rocks, his shoulder cracking against a sharp rock causing blood to ooze from the flesh wound._

_Dan was too far away. His body bolted forward before his mind even had time to catch up. Someone was screaming. He was screaming. Yelling out his brother’s name over and over again as he reached the water, his younger brother’s body having disappeared under the foaming white water._

_Dan had never been the best swimmer, but he jumped in without hesitation, grabbing mindlessly at anything that felt like skin, the water icy against his skin. When he finally found his brother, he was pale blue just like the dream and just like the dream he wasn’t breathing._

_It was that night, for the first time, that he began to dream of hazy white rooms and dying flowers._

***

“Do you want to talk about it?” Phil’s quiet words shook Dan from his own head.

The two boys were still seated in the back of PJ’s car and were weaving their way through London traffic. It was half-past one in the morning. The rest of the car ride had been utterly silent, save for Dan’s infrequent sniffling.

The only answer Dan could provide was the shake of his head. This seemed to be enough for Phil to let the subject drop. Phil didn’t make a sound but his hand silently slid across the space between them to rest palm up on Dan’s knee. For a moment Dan questioned if he would be crossing some invisible line by taking it, but quietly placed his palm against the other boy’s anyway. It was just holding hands. Phil could see Dan was sad. He was his friend. He wanted to comfort him. That was all there was to it. Nothing more.

Sometimes Dan wished he was stupid enough to believe the lies he told himself.

Dan could tell there was something more than platonic emotions in the way the other boy gave his hand a tight squeeze, his palms slightly clammy and warm. Phil liked him in the same way Dan figured he liked Phil. Dan’s life was all over the place, but he could work out how his heart felt in that moment even when swamped in past sorrow.

He quietly leant over and rested his head on Phil’s shoulder. Phil didn’t say anything, but he did move slightly closer. Dan was both scared and relieved that whatever was going on between them seemed neutral. Dan had never thought of himself as someone who liked guys, though he hadn’t ruled it out either. He wasn’t the type of person who often felt the need for other people in that way. He was fine on his own, but there was something about Phil. He couldn’t narrow it down. He wouldn’t say he was mutually exclusive to either boys or girls, but at the same time, bisexuality didn’t seem to fit well either. He just liked Phil. He didn’t need to be placed in a box.

Dan shut his eyes, not wishing for sleep, but instead for the time to pass by both faster and slower. Faster, because he wanted to forget the night, but slower because he quite liked holding Phil’s hand in the back seat of the car. He felt warm and loved.

The sound of car horns and quiet radio music was drowned out by the pattering of rain which soon formed a torrential downpour. Dan felt comforted by the noise for half a second before he started to feel like the car was folding in on itself. He felt like he was drowning all over again, that was until he took a deep breath, inhaling Phil’s scent. He welcomed the mixture of coffee, vanilla and autumn. His smell was like his touch and for a moment Dan wondered if his touch was like his taste, but that thought was too far.

This close proximity intoxicated him in a way it shouldn’t. If he stayed this close for too long in such a vulnerable state, he would do something stupid. He would regret whatever this stupid thing was. Fate was kind enough that in that moment the car began to slow and pull over. Dan opened his eyes and realised they were outside his building. He sat up in an awkwardly jerky fashion, feeling an inevitable tether pulling him back to that warm and comfortable place, the place where the world could be right, for a small amount of time. 

He didn’t have an umbrella, yet it was still pissing down rain. He quickly resigned to the fact that he would be both wet and freezing by the time he clambered up his steps and reached the inside of his building. This wasn’t good news because the toxic mixture of memories, which this sensation dug up could send him spiralling.

“Can you stay with me tonight?” Dan felt his lips moving without realising, his body going into auto pilot. Phil was already gathering up his things and tapping PJ in a kind of quiet goodbye.

“Yeah, I can do that.” Phil’s tone held a kind of softness Dan had scarcely heard in other’s voices. It was something too soft. Too pure. It had to be false.

Phil slipped out of his coat and placed it over his head as a makeshift umbrella before clambering out of the car and running to open Dan’s door before the younger boy even had the chance to move.

“I can open my own door,” Dan noted, but all his intended venom fell short and instead it just came out devoid of any emotion at all.

“I know you can,” Phil’s voice still held the same tone.

 Dan wasn’t glass. He wasn’t going to shatter. He had done just fine holding himself together with cellar tape and superglue before Phil had come along. He could deal with this alone if he needed to but that was the thing, maybe he didn’t want to. Tonight, he felt less like a person and more like a thing. Maybe for once, he could deal with being slightly fragile.

Phil moved his jacket from over his own head to cover Dan’s without a single word. Phil seemed to quietly know what would set Dan off, maybe it was just a lucky guess or a quiet intuition, but it almost seemed like Phil has a map of his body, to his mind one that said ‘these places still hurt some, and these still hurt lots’. Dan didn’t need to say a word, but he would still argue like a person and not a thing, just to show he still cared.

“You are going to get soaked.”

“Only if you make me wait ten hours for you to get out of the car, you spork.”

Dan chuckled, despite everything and rushed from the car. He and Phil ran together in an awkward and scrambled fumble of clumsy feet gliding over the wet pavement and pounding against the stairs.

By the time the two stood in the living room Dan was surprised to find himself mostly dry, save for his socks and the cuffs of his jeans. Phil, on the other hand, was dripping top to toe, his hair sticking down over his face and the nape of his neck. Dan felt a chill run down his spine. This was a moment.

There are times in a person’s life where for a split second it is almost like you leave your own body just to quietly remind yourself to keep this moment close. Dan felt like this was something he would look back on through the passing of time. He and Phil, looking like children who had just scampered home from playing tag in the rain, Phil completely soaked while Dan’s hair was beginning to curl from dampness and humidity.

“Fuck, we look like a mess,” Dan breathed, quickly rushing over to turn the heating on, holding up a hand for when Phil tried to follow.

“Hey, you’re going to wreck the carpet and if you do, the cost is coming out of your half of the rent.” Phil had laughed though his body was starting to shiver.

“I haven’t even moved in yet and you’re already a slave driver, should I be having second thoughts?”

“Probably… Go have a shower though before you turn into a popsicle. I’ll find you something to change into.”

Dan was aware they were both tap-dancing on the line between a platonic relationship and something more, but he was also aware he couldn’t just let Phil stay soaking wet and shivering.

***

Dan had found Phil something to slip into and had passed him both that and a towel before leading the boy to the bathroom and making quick work not to linger. He wasn’t altogether alone, but in that moment, he felt alone with his thoughts. The pattering of rain mixed with the noise of his shower faucet. It became a quiet reminder of Dan’s previously glum mood. He couldn’t drag himself from the memories of his brother’s body lying baby blue in his arms. His jaw locked into place and his hands balled into fists. It was his fault. If he had just taken his brother in the first place it never would have happened. It was his fault.

Dan knew that if he wallowed for any longer he would fall into the blackened vortex of his own mind once more and so he stood, making his way over to the piano placed in the corner of his living room.

He began to quietly place song after song in a meticulous manner. It wasn’t the ones he would play at work. They were too easy. He could play them without thinking. He needed to think to stop his mind from going elsewhere. He lost himself in the quiet pattering of notes. He forgot where one song ended and the other began. He shut his eyes for a moment and heard the crashing of the waves against a distant shoreline, crashing into rocks. He could hear himself screaming.

He played louder.

He opened his eyes and focused on the dancing of black and white keys bowing beneath his fingers. If he focused hard enough, he could forget everything, his memories, where he was, who he was. He and the piano began and ended with one another at that moment.

“I like that one. I haven’t heard you play it before,” Dan was shocked from his little world with Phil’s words. He stopped playing and turned to face Phil.

It was an odd sight, Phil in his clothes, in his house. It was a nice thought. It was a sight he wanted to get used to. Phil anywhere at all really.

“Yeah. I like it too. I tend to play the piano when I get… I don’t know moody.”

Dan let out an awkward laugh at how stupid he sounded but Phil just nodded his head and looked at the small space of room left on the piano bench. Dan blushed and moved over to make room for Phil, who quietly pulled up a space beside him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Dan sucked in a sharp breath through gritted teeth, knowing what ‘it’ was.

“Nope.”

“Okay.”

That was the good thing about Phil. He didn’t push. He just let Dan be Dan. He didn’t try to fix him, he just tried to hold Dan’s hand while he fixed himself. He would pass him strips of cellar tape and tell him which pieces of himself should fit where, but he would still stand back and let Dan do it. Until this moment Dan didn’t even understand that was what he needed.

“What song was it?” Phil changed the topic and Dan was grateful.

“True Love Waits, by Radiohead.”

Phil hummed and nodded his head in an approving manner. He watched quietly as Dan played the song through once more again and shot him a kind of lopsided grin.

“Teach me how to play it,” He pushed quietly, trying to place his hands over the place Dan's hands had previously resided. He laid them down slightly wrong, but Dan chuckled and tried to correct them.

“You can’t even play Hot Crossed Buns without making my ears bleed.”

Phil’s face formed fake pain before he chuckled and nudged Dan’s shoulder in a teasing manner.

“I will play Hot Crossed Buns until you go deaf or teach me how to play.”

Dan scoffed and shook his head before sighing and leaning over to show him the first few seconds of the song, then placed Phil’s hands over the right notes, again moving his hand from one side of the piano to the next. 

“This is going to take all bloody night,” Dan whined with a small laugh, not minding in the slightest.

“Well it’s not like we have any other plans, do we?”

Dan supposed not and so he continued to teach Phil how to play. It was about an hour later where Phil had managed to fumble through the first minute of the song that he gave in, quietly asking Dan to play him something.

He quietly cycled through his discography of songs he knew on piano: Ingenue by It's Atoms For Peace, Svefn-g-englar by Sigur Rós, Earnestly Yours by Keaton Henson and Touch by Sleeping at Last, to name a few,  before moving on to the classics.

Phil fell asleep on Dan’s shoulder somewhere between Für Elise and Clair de Lune. For a long while, Dan didn’t move, trying to decide what to do before sighing and trying to awkwardly pick Phil up without shaking him awake. It proved more difficult than he had first thought and made a mental note that maybe, just maybe, going to the gym wasn’t the worst idea.

His first attempt to pick him up almost landed both of them face first into the piano. He sighed and changed his technique up bending down and lifting Phil from the piano stool onto his back and tried to secure Phil there by tucking the boy’s legs under his armpits and his arms over his shoulders.

Dan thought of setting Phil down on the sofa, but decided that Phil’s six foot something frame would struggle to fit on the sofa, let alone fit there comfortably, so instead, he took the boy and carried him into the spare room, laying him down there and panting heavily. Okay, the gym was definitely a good idea.

He drank in Phil’s image for a moment before turning on his heels and heading back to the piano stool, knowing he would get no sleep that night, he would just have to fill in time until Phil woke up again.


	10. How Not to be Happy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small trigger warning for this chapter. There is mention of sensitive topics to do with suicide. It is brief and overall doesn't play a large part in the chapter, but it is there so tread carefully if this topic disturbs you.

**_I may not have gone where I intended to go but I think I have ended up where I needed to be._ **

**_\- Douglas Adams_ **

“I’ll race you.”

“You race me and we’ll both end up with broken necks.”

“Hey, if so, the hospital has free food and wifi. I think breaking our necks is the best-case scenario.”

Dan was in stitches laughing at how ridiculous Phil was being. Several weeks had passed since Dan’s quiet breakdown. Neither of the boys had talked about it since. They simply left that part of Dan’s past be. Phil had taken to spending most of his time sleeping at Dan’s place and with Phil’s lease ending that month, it only seemed logical for him to start moving in.

The two were standing at the bottom of Dan’s staircase- their staircase. Both boys were juggling a handful of boxes between them. Phil’s legs already seemed shaky beneath him and yet he was proposing a race. Dan knew it was a stupid idea, but for some reason, he didn’t so much mind doing stupid things if Phil was involved.

“That is the best case, huh?” Dan questioned shifting the weight of the boxes from one arm to the next.

“Yeah, do you have a better one?” Dan was already smirking devilishly.

“I could think of a few. One of which being-”

Dan took off running up the stairs, his feet clumsily fumbling to hold him upright. He was panting by the time he heard another set of footsteps jogging up behind him.

“Me winning.”

He shot a smile over his shoulder at Phil, who answered by poking out his tongue. He eventually caught up around the second flight of stairs and by the time they reached the third, where Dan’s flat resided, they were both heavily panting. They reached the door before realising it was locked and neither had the hands to locate a key. Phil dropped his boxes and peeked under the doormat.

“Don’t you have a spare key?” He questioned softly and Dan remembered that Phil still didn’t have a key of his own.

“No. I’ve never had the need to, I suppose. Mine’s in my back pocket.”

Dan was about to place down his boxes and get it, beads of sweat sticking his fringe in front his eyes and slightly obscuring his view. He saw Phil disappear from his vision, letting out a surprised gasp as the other boy reached into his back pocket and pulled out the keys.

“You’re so touchy,” Phil chuckled as he shook his head and opened the door, holding it for Dan.

Phil watched as Dan attempted to rub his face against his shoulder to brush his hair from his eyes. Phil then smiled and moved forward to do it for Dan. He pretended not to notice how the other boy’s face turned pink.

“I just didn’t bloody well see you coming. God only knows who could be groping me.”

The side of Phil’s mouth quirked up in amusement as Dan shot him back another slightly dimpled smile. He looked tired, but Dan always looked tired.

“I don’t know. It could be the meth dealer from the room above, the miscreant toddler from 304, maybe Ms Jenkinson from across the hall.”

“Hey, she’s a nice old lady. Every time I run into her when I’m heading out, she offers me cookies. Don’t dis Ms Jenkinson.”

Dan rolled his eyes, moving inside and dropping the boxes to the ground with a thud. He groaned quietly and stretched out, rubbing his shoulder. He was too old for this shit. Maybe he should go to the gym. 

“Why don’t you marry her if you like her so much,” Dan teased, though he was surprised to hear a hint of jealousy in his own voice. Shit. When did that happen?

“Because she’s like sixty and something tells me she wouldn’t have helped me move my boxes into her flat.”

After Phil finished speaking, there seemed to be a flash of something like fear in his eyes, like he had made a mistake. Then Dan seemed to cotton on and tried to make the situation less awkward and in turn only ended up making it worse.

“That sounds like a dodgy euphemism. So, that’s the only stipulation you have to want to marry someone? Guess I’m ticking all the boxes then,” Dan realised he might have sounded like he was flirting- was he? Maybe. Fuck.

“Um… That sounded worse than it should have been.”

They were both blushing and chuckling awkwardly before continuing like the moment had never happened, both bringing Phil’s things into what was now his room and working at cutting off the cellar tape and gutting the insides of the boxes.

Dan couldn’t help himself inspecting some of Phil’s things, the books, films or knickknacks the other boy had brought along. It was already late afternoon. Dan was lucky enough to have the day off from work so he and Phil could power through unpacking and making the blank canvas of a room slightly homier.

“I’m surprised you fit all this shit in your old place. It was so tiny. You must be a Tetris expert or something. Where did you even get all this?”

Phil chuckled quietly and shook his head as he pulled out several plush toys, mostly old Nintendo characters and old anime characters. Everything Phil owned seemed to scream in bright and exuberant colour. It was totally fucking up Dan’s monochrome theme, but for some reason, he didn’t seem to mind.

“I have you know, back in the old days when handheld Tetris was a thing I used to kick arse and most of the things are from online, lots of stuff from Japan. I would love to go visit sometime, how ace would that be?”

Dan hung off Phil’s every word as he always did, nodding quietly before finding his dimpled grin spreading wider. He never found himself smiling like this with anyone else. It was as if he had a secret smile reserved for only Phil. He tried not to linger on that thought. He was going to get hurt by letting himself get too attached, though something in the back of his head told him it was too late to try and avoid attachment now.

“Sometimes I forget you’re Northern. Then you use words like 'ace', and I remember. I love Japan too. I’ve never been before. I would die to go.”

Phil beamed as he began stacking his books and dvds on his blank shelf.

“We should have a holiday there together, it’s always better to holiday with someone, right?” He looked over his shoulder at Dan, shooting him a smile.

“Yeah… right. Sounds like a plan.” Dan beamed.

This idea seemed to fill his head for most of the next hour of quiet unpacking. He realised that the idea of going anywhere with Phil was appealing. This was followed by the thought of how he had never felt this way about anyone before. More internal spiralling into questioning their relationship and if they were getting too close for comfort followed.

He was so caught up in his own mind, he hardly realised that Phil had been silent for the better part of half an hour. When he finally let reality settle back in, he glanced over to his friend, realising that Phil was fast asleep, curled up nestled between one large box of miscellaneous junk and his bookshelf. Dan found himself smiling softly before sighing. He almost forgot what it was like to sleep at a regular time, without fear or hesitation.

He moved over to Phil’s sleeping frame, quietly manoeuvring his body into a position where he could get Phil off the ground, again opting for the piggyback approach. This seemed to be a habit of theirs. Phil would eventually fall asleep in an inconvenient place and Dan would carry him to the bed. The next morning things would go on like it never happened.

Dan was quietly surprised that after boosting Phil up onto his back, he felt arms tighten slightly around his neck. He turned his head and met the squinted eyes of a sleepy snowbird.

“You’re awake,” Dan noted the obvious.

“You’re carrying me,” Phil countered.

“You fell asleep on the floor.”

“I also fell asleep with my contacts in,” Phil yawned scrubbing at his eyes.

“And without tea.”

Dan rolled his eyes at that, realising that the older boy didn’t seem to be begging Dan to let him go. Phil simply rested his head on the boy’s shoulder and let out a quiet yawn.

“Do you want me to put you down?” Dan questioned with the slightest raise of his brow.

He felt Phil give a feeble nod against his shoulder and with that he set his friend down on his feet, stretching afterwards with a small groan.

“It would probably be best. We can unpack the rest in the morning I’ll just go get changed. Cereal for an after-midnight tea sound like a good idea?” Phil questioned with a quiet chuckle.

Dan found himself smiling softly and nodding because Phil was the only weirdo in the world who seemed to enjoy cereal as a midnight snack, Dan wasn’t complaining.

“I can keep unpacking if you don’t mind me lurking in your bedroom while you sleep, it gives me something to do,” Dan offered with a shrug of his shoulders.

“No way, you’re sleeping too. I don’t want you to collapse on me from lack of sleep.”

Dan found himself internally groaning, but he wasn’t about to argue.

***

It was several moments later when Dan and Phil were sitting cross-legged on Phil’s half made bed, both cradling bowls of already soggy cereal. Dan was mindlessly stirring his cereal around, watching as the milk created a small whirlpool in his bowl.

“Do you think you could read cereal bits like you can read tea leaves?”

Phil looked up from his bowl and chuckled faintly.

“Probably. I don’t see why not. I guess the mystics of old weren’t that into Crunchy Nut cereal.”

“They were right missing out,” Dan countered his mouth still full.

“Yeah, they were,” Phil agreed.

Their conversation went on a kind of odd tangent from there. Both boys picturing what types of cereal people would have enjoyed in medieval times. Phil suggested mutton and milk. Dan thought it sounded foul, but accurate. Somehow that led into a tangent about the price of food in the medieval time verse now. They both agreed that it would be better to barter for stuff than to work. This led to them talking about if they actually enjoyed their jobs.

At this point, both boys had finished their cereal and were laying, looking mindlessly up at Phil’s roof.

“I wanted to make films when I was younger,” Phil whispered quietly, his eyes shifting over to look at Dan.

“I wanted to be happy,” Dan mumbled snidely and sighed.

“I guess we can’t always get what we want, huh?”

“So you’re not happy?”

There was a palpable silence which hung in the air. This conversation sounded too open. Dan’s thoughts were morphing from Fort Knox to an open book with the simple batter of Phil’s lashes and he hated it. He didn’t let people in, he was cold and removed. That was who he was. He wasn’t about to change that.

“I’m not… not happy,” Dan gave his quiet reply while looking up at Phil’s roof, noticing a small crack, beginning to form and branch out into smaller shatters. He would have to remember to get the landlord to fix it.

“I guess I just feel neutral. I have a good job, a nice flat. Life is okay.”

At these words, Phil’s face seemed to fall before forming back into his composed neutral position. Dan couldn’t help but question that millisecond where Phil showed his true face, questioning why that would be his reaction. He wasn’t unhappy. He was fine. There was a difference.

“Are you happy?” Dan questioned back, acutely aware of Phil’s side, pressing into him on the twin sized mattress.

“I am. I might not be where I thought I was going to be, but that doesn’t mean I’m unhappy. I like my job. I work with my best friend. I love London. I talk to my parents every other day, and we have a solid relationship. I’m also rooming with a really lovely guy.”

Maybe that’s why Phil was upset. Dan hadn’t mentioned him when he said he wasn’t unhappy. Dan didn’t think anyone has ever called him ‘lovely’ before and he was unsure how to react to it. If it was anyone else he would roll his eyes and make a snide comment, but when Phil said it, he sounded genuine.

“I’ve been a lot less unhappy since I met you,” Dan whispered feeling like he had just let down one of his walls and it scared him.

He sat upright in bed, balling his hands into fists to hold back from saying anything more. Phil knew far too much about him already. Phil had been there with him through his nightmares and breakdowns, Phil had laughed at his odd quirks and marvelled at his passions. He had let Phil further in than he had let anyone. It was like Phil had begun stripping down the layers of Dan’s disingenuous persona, one day at a time. He was starting to get too close to his heart and so he did as he always would when people got too close.

He slammed the door in their face and built another wall.

“I better go into my room, need to sleep and all that.”

Phil looked slightly hurt, but there was a knowing look in his eyes.

“You’re scared of getting hurt again, aren’t you? You were close with your brother, then after what happened it hurt you so much you started shutting people out whenever they got to know the real you because you were scared you would lose them. Being numb might stop you from being hurt, but it also stops you from being happy.”

Dan squared his jaw, his fight or flight response started to kick in and instead of running away he chose to stand his ground. His shoulders squared in a quiet rebellion.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” He breathed out simply.

“I’m not afraid of getting hurt. I don’t give two fucks about myself most of the time. I’m scared of hurting other people because I have a pretty shit track record of keeping people I love alive.”

He hadn’t meant to be so honest. His whole Fort Knox crumbled as though it was made of paper and glue. Fuck. Too honestly. He had just fallen past the point of no return.

Phil’s face fell at this, clearly becoming softer. He sat up, making room for Dan and quietly pulled the other boy to sit down beside him. Dan didn’t argue. At this point, he felt numb. He let Phil drag him to the edge of the bed before his legs seemed to give way.

“What happened to your brother wasn’t your fault,” Phil began softly and again they were holding hands. Dan wasn’t sure who started it. For all he knew it could have been him.

Phil's hands were ice cold, a pale shade of white. Dan's fingers traced over the lines and dips in Phil's hands. Dan knew these hands too well. He knew them almost as well as he knew his own. It scared the hell out of him because he knew what was coming.

“My best friend hung himself in sixth form. Guess I wasn’t that good of a friend to not realise something was up either.”

This hung in the air for a long moment before the cracks began to show and Dan’s hands began to tremble. He wasn’t sure how it happened, but soon enough he and Phil were lying down again, a lot closer than before, still holding hands.

“That wasn’t your fault either. Stuff like that… It can’t be helped. You don’t have to look after everyone in the world. It’s not your job. Your brother. Your friend. The people on the train. You can’t blame yourself for everything bad that happens in the world. You can’t stop bad things from happening, but you can make more good things. That’s what you’re not doing. By isolating yourself, you are just going to make yourself miserable.”

Dan was beginning to forget what good things, even were. That was until he thought back through the past few months. He thought of Phil’s smile whenever he walked into the coffee shop. He thought of their conversations on every odd topic known to man. He thought of watching Buffy episodes with Phil for the fifth time and still not being able to get over the way Phil smiled when he watched it. He even thought of the late-night trysts he, PJ and Phil went on, like the times where they had all got together for midnight pizza or played board games at PJ’s.

Dan also thought of all the times Phil had spent sleeping over at his house, all the times he had to piggyback the boy to bed or when he would teach Phil new songs on the piano, how he could hear Phil improving. He thought how his mother asking him how Phil was every time they spoke despite Dan stating until he was blue in the face that neither he nor Phil was dating. She still thought it. Dan didn’t blame her.

“I have you. You’re my good thing.” Dan whispered in a daze, seeming to catch Phil off guard at his statement.

“Then let me be your good thing. Stop pushing me away.”

Phil’s voice hung in the air for so long it felt as though the world had stopped spinning. Dan lay there quietly, his eyes travelling upwards to where Phil was gazing down at him, his mouth pursed in a perplexed manner. Dan through caution to the wind at that moment, feeling his soul or whatever the fuck he was made up of, transcend from his body as he leant over, feeling his lips press against the other boy’s lips roughly, clumsily.

Dan couldn't help but scream at his own mind, his own body. Whatever had made the choice to kiss Phil. This couldn't end well. This wasn't going to end well. By doing this, however Phil reacted, Dan knew that in this moment he was breaking his own heart.

He felt so far removed from himself in that moment, unable to believe he was brushing lips with his best friend. Phil’s lips were slightly chapped and the smallest amount of stubble scrubbed against Dan's chin. This was the first time Dan had kissed a boy because he wanted to. He had done it on the odd occasion for a dare, but never because it was something he honestly felt like doing. This was a whole new ballpark.

Kissing a boy was one thing, kissing Phil was another. Phil was his best friend and at that moment Dan’s chest tightened with anxiety, afraid that the other boy would reject him. Instead, he felt Phil’s lips pressing against his, moving with him. Dan was confused what to do with his hands before they found Phil’s hair and locked there.

When they finally pulled back both boys looked shocked, wide-eyed, deer in the headlights shocked. The world seemed to shatter at the realisation that whatever was going on between them was neutral.

“Let me make you happy,” Phil whispered under his breath, his voice quivering.

“I can’t make you happy,” Dan countered with a timid whisper.

“You already have.”


	11. Tralfamadorian Literature

**_To die, to sleep -_ **   
**To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub,**   
**For in this sleep of death what dreams may come...”**

**_\- William Shakespeare_ **

Despite having lived in his flat for over two years Dan had never spent the night in the spare room, the room that was now Phil’s. The small glow of morning light came in through the window on the opposite side as to what Dan was used to. It was interesting, to say the least. Maybe he should have thought of coming here to entertain his mind on other sleepless nights, though something told him it would have never been as good as this. He was lying under the covers, his feet tangled with that of his once best friend. Dan didn’t know what to call him now. They kissed, they cuddled under the covers and Phil had eventually fallen asleep.

Now Dan was left alone to ruminate over everything as he would always do. Phil had begged him to sleep, but Dan didn’t wish for sleep to ruin what was happening between them. He wanted to have this moment be pure, even if it was foggy with sleep deprivation, at least he would always look upon it fondly.

 

Dan wasn’t used to sleeping with someone. The last time it had occurred had been years ago. Dan wasn’t even sure if he had sex with the girl or not. Sex wasn’t something he thought of often. It was just something he placed at the back of his mind. He supposed with the constant need to isolate himself, he had learnt to compensate by having a lower than average libido. He didn’t need to be physical with anyone. He hadn’t felt the urge. That was until he met Phil. Sure he had sex with girls before, as a rite of passage or as a drunken decision.

Sex to him was like wine. For the most part, he hated the stuff, but he remembered his mother would always let him have a sip of a particular brand every Christmas from when he was fourteen onwards. He wasn’t sure if it was just feeling like a 'grown up’ or the nostalgia of it, but Dan had gotten used to that wine. He had learned to love it and even on the odd occasion crave it. He thought Phil might be a little something like that.

Dan found his eyes growing heavy as a quiet sigh built in his chest. He couldn’t sleep. He wouldn’t. He would just move a little closer to Phil and let his eyes flutter shut for just a few moments. Phil's chest rose and fell in his sleep, small noises escaping his throat half a wordless mumble, half a soft snore. His body shifted closer to Dan's, even in his sleep. It was comfortable. It was warm. It was home.

Dan let sleep take him.

***

The morning light had not yet reached the city of London by the time Phil Lester awoke. He questioned for a moment what the warm heat and weight was in his arms, before realising that it was Dan. His eyes fluttered down to look at the boy, expecting to find him awake, yet surprised to see him sleeping.

Dan’s face was contorted as it always was when he slept, never peaceful, never restful. He looked as though he was on the verge of tears, so Phil quietly pulled him closer. He uttered sweet nothings against the other boy’s hair. The words he spoke moved from kind to conversational, anything that would get Dan to settle down. He always seemed to be able to settle him slightly by speaking. He talked about nothing really. Just speaking to make noise. He watched Dan’s face slowly smooth over. He looked so much younger on the odd occasions when this would happen.

Phil settled back down for a moment before he saw it, the creeping black shadows which seemed to linger around every turn of Phil’s life, ever since Dan had walked into it. It was a small cost, but a cost all the same.

Blackened shadows sat at the foot of their bed, quietly watching. They didn’t have eyes, but Phil knew they could see. He was unsure how this had occurred to him. It was just a feeling. He stared the thing down, not looking away for even a second. He was sick of this. Whatever the hell it was. He hoped they would find someone else to latch onto because Phil had it with this. He wasn’t one to be stern but in that moment, he found his voice.

“Piss off,” He managed. It wasn’t often you could hear Phil cursing so the word seemed to hold even more power.

The shadow lurched forward, hovering an inch before Phil’s face. A hand seemed to materialise from the noncorporeal blackness, wrapping around Phil's neck holding him locked in place. The hand was white as a sheet and sliced up beyond belief. Small beads of ruby blood bubbled to the surface of deep and ragged cuts. It looked as though someone had shoved their hand through a window. Phil’s brows furrowed slightly realising the hands held an almost horrifying similarity to his own. He was being pulled into the darkness, his heart racing. He came face to face with it and in a low and hushed tone the voice hissed,

“Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”

The word ‘dreams’ seemed to hold out for an infinitely long space of time before the creature let him go and slunk back into whatever world it had come from. Phil was left wide-eyed, still thinking that maybe he was dreaming. He clambered out of bed, untangling himself from Dan and attempting to shake these wild thoughts from his head.

***

“You scared me.”

A familiar phrase rose from the cloud of Dan’s dream.

“Hey, you have to look at me, yeah? It’s going to be okay.”

His dream self-moved to turn his head and for the first time, the dream did not restart. He turned and was met with his own face, shattered and broken. He was pale and looked more wrecked than he had ever seen himself. His body filled with nothing but confusion.

He looked down to the hands. He let his heart realise what his mind knew. They were not his hands. They had never been his hands. His dream self had never been him. It never would be him. He wasn’t seeing his own death.

The bodies beside him were moaning loudly out in pain, the sound now matching that of the chaos in Dan's own mind. His heart threatened to burst open and bleed out all the pain his soul felt. It wasn't fair. This wasn't fair.

His heart was more than breaking. Breaking would be less painful. There was a pain in this loss. It was loss before the loss had even happened. It was the knowing. The certainty of it. He prayed he was mad just so he didn't have to know that one day he would lose what he had just gained. It was the shattering pain of uncertainty. He knew in his heart this would happen. He had known for a long while. He had always known, somewhere in the back of his mind, but he could never know when.

 When his chest would burst from the pain of loss. When he would be alone again. A vulnerable kind of saddened sob rose in his chest, but he didn't have time to cry. He imagined for a moment a nurse materialising in the scene and asking him where it hurt. The answer? Everywhere.  As the vision of himself slowly began to fade into oblivion and the ringing of machines swelled. A faded voice mumbled,

“If you close your eyes you can see the stars. Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts."

 How could it be okay when it hurt everywhere?

Dan held onto the body which wasn’t his own, looking down to see his arms were covered in deep cuts. It was enough to make him leap up with surprise, shocking himself awake.

***

The room around Dan took time to materialise and at first, he was met with only confusion. He was waking in a strange place, which wasn’t his bed from a nightmare he was too afraid to try and recall again. The memories of the night before slowly flooded back to him and his arm outstretched across the length of the twin sized mattress, searching for some sign of warmth.

His heart skipped a beat when there was none to be found. Where was Phil? Had he decided the night before was already a mistake? Had he packed up and ran? Shit.

Dan’s eyes wandered around the room, realising that the boxes he had left on the floor the night prior were no longer there. It was another bad sign. However, upon closer inspection, he came to realise the clutter of objects, which had been in those boxes were now sitting on shelves and table tops. He let his heartbeat catch up to this realisation and let out a heavy sigh.

“Good morning,” Phil’s voice came from the corner of the room, sounding surprisingly chipper for such an early hour.

Phil must have already had his morning cup of coffee. One thing Dan had learned early on in their relationship- or whatever it was he and Phil had, was that you shouldn’t even attempt to talk to Phil in the morning before he had his coffee. He practically inhaled the stuff throughout the day to keep his chipper mood up. Cut him open and he would probably ooze caramel macchiato.

“Morning,” Dan slurred sitting upwards in bed finding the sheets sticking to his skin.

“What are you doing?” Dan questioned as he realised Phil was perched on the windowsill, attempting to hang something over it.

Dan clambered out of bed, his dream coming back to him once more. He peeled the covers off him, sweat sticking the white cotton to his half naked frame. Phil held up the object which Dan quickly realised was a dream catcher and scoffed quietly.

“Hey, I thought it would be a good idea. I even phoned up Dorothy to double check. She also gave me a bunch of crystals to put out. Apparently, they keep away the bad juju. I’m willing to give anything a try.”

Dan looked about at the small glass-like rocks, watching as the morning sun caused rainbows to bounce around the room. He found a small smile creep onto his lips. It was definitely fucking up his aesthetic.

“Just don’t let any more of your light leak out into the rest of the house. I still want some doom and gloom to be left when you’re finished.”

Phil had rolled his eyes and hung the dream catcher up before jumping down, his eyes searching over Dan’s body before freezing.

“You hurt yourself in your sleep,” He noted simply and cause Dan to look down, realising that blood had begun to trickle from a long scratch left on his forearm.

“Let me…” Phil began as he moved closer, Dan took a small step back.

“I’ll fix it,” Dan assured, reverting to his old ways.

“I can do it myself.”

Phil seemed to pause, thinking this over for a moment before sighing and taking Dan’s hand. Dan didn’t think he would ever stop being surprised by these small shows of affection. He stopped arguing with Phil and let the boy drag him into their shared bathroom. Phil opened the medicine cabinet and began sorting through it to find what he needed.

“I know you can do it yourself, but you don’t have to so stop being stubborn.”

Dan stopped arguing and instead helped by quietly pointing out bandages and antibacterial wipes. Phil offered him a smile as thanks and got Dan to position himself on the bathroom bench so he could get a better look at the wound. It wasn’t deep, contrary to the amount of blood pooling from the other boy’s arm. It was the type of cut one would get while shaving. A shallow nick, which bled profusely. 

Phil began to quietly dab the wound, causing Dan to let out a hiss through gritted teeth. Phil quietly leant over and placed a kiss on Dan’s bare shoulder. Again, another surprise of affection. He could get used to this. He caught himself warning his heart not to fall, but it was already failing horribly. He had already fallen. No amount of future sorrow could stop him from falling further.

“Phil?” Dan’s voice held a kind of urgency which caused Phil’s head to jerk up.

“Did I hurt you?” Phil questioned, to which Dan answered with a simple shake of his head.

“I just… I wanted to know. What are we? You and I? Us? This?”

Dan had so many more questions. Why me? What did that mean for their ‘friendship’? Would this make things awkward between them if anything did go wrong? Could he even handle going back to a life without Phil in it?

Phil’s face seemed to instantly soften as if he had been afraid Dan was about to reject him altogether. That was something he could never understand. Phil seemed as scared to lose him as he was to lose Phil. He supposes that was how this type of relationship worked, but in the same mouthful, Dan didn’t know what Phil saw in him.

“This can be whatever you want I guess. If you’re scared to put a label on it, then it can just be us. Dan and Phil. Phil and Dan-” Dan screwed up his nose and chuckled.

“Not to be narcissistic but Phil and Dan sounds wrong.”

Phil rolled his eyes and stopped cleaning the wound, instead he moved on to untangling the bandages as he responded.

“Fine. We can be Dan and Phil and just work out what that is. Tell each other what we’re okay with and not okay with. Now, are you planning on having a shower, because I’m not dressing this just for you to get it all soapy.”

“I was thinking about it,” Dan noted leaning back against the bathroom wall, sighing quietly.

“Well I’ll come back after you’re done,” Phil began, but to Dan’s surprise, he found himself not wanting him to leave.

They could be Dan and Phil. Dan just had to figure out what that was. Phil kissed him last night and had continued to do so this morning, so obviously, it meant something.

“You don’t have to go… if you don’t want to. I mean… the water bill is pretty bloody expensive as it is. It would be economical to shower together.”

Dan watched as a shy smile crept over Phil’s face before he shook his head as if trying to not come off as being too eager. He then cleared his throat and simply uttered,

“Since you put it like that, it would be irresponsible if I didn’t shower with you. I mean global warming and all that.”

Both boys exchanged a kind of secret smile. They undressed in their respective corners of the room, Dan finishing first since he only ever slept in boxers while Phil took his time undressing from an oversized shirt and pyjama bottoms. Dan started quietly running the water, testing the temperature and climbing into the shower.

For the most part, Dan managed to keep his eyes waist height and up as Phil climbed into the shower with him. Dan felt slightly tense. It was a whole new experience for him. He felt as though he was meeting Phil for the first time again and it terrified the shit out of him. Phil seemed calm and sure of himself while Dan’s stomach was in knots, doing backflips every few seconds.

Phil grabbed a bar of soap and began washing himself down, humming along to a tune quietly before looking over at Dan, who was practically cowering in the corner like a scared two-year-old. Phil shyly grabbed his wrist and tugged him over so he too was under the shower spray before letting him be again. He then went back to humming a song by Muse.

“If you had to pick,” Phil began as he started to scrub soap over his frame.

“Would you rather never be able to play music again, or never be able to listen to music again?”

Dan knew what Phil was trying to do. He could see how tense Dan’s shoulders were, every ounce of flesh seemed balled tightly. He was trying to assure Dan that they could still be the same Dan and Phil as they were the day prior, just with different dynamics.

“If I choose to play music does that mean I also can’t hear the music I’m playing like in _Your Lie in April_? If so, that would be pretty pointless.”

“I didn’t think of it that in depth, so I suppose you’re right.”

Conversation melded back into old habits and continued to flow simply, they took turns at proposing ridiculous ‘what if’ questions while washing themselves then moving on to washing one another without even thinking. Dan wasn’t sure who started it, though he thought it must have been Phil, his hands, surprising Dan by helping massage shampoo into his hair. Dan learned to like the sensation. His naked frame relaxed slightly against Phil’s. It was the odd juxtaposition of friendly conversation and the touch of something so much more.

“Hey Phil,” Dan found himself muttering under his breath, Phil turns his attention to Dan, leaning over and resting his chin on Dan’s shoulder humming as a response.

“I don’t think I would mind calling you my boyfriend,” It seemed to take Phil by surprise, so much so he couldn’t hide the wide smile, which near cracked his face in two.

“I wouldn’t mind that either.”

He gave Dan’s wrist a tug, turning him around and again their lips crushed together. Dan’s heart began to quicken, his body instantly sinking into the sensation, it almost began to feel familiar. One day it could feel as easy as breathing, if only they both lasted that long. Dan pushed these lurking thoughts to the back of his mind. He didn’t need them today. He was going to take as much of Phil as he could get.

The two were soon pressing lightly against the glass frame of the shower door, Dan feels his body grow cool, his back pressing against the cold surface while hot water pooled over Phil’s shoulders. The kissing grew hungry, desperate. Hands were locked in hair or being pushed against flesh, kissing moving from the lips down jaws and stopping at Dan's neck.

Kissing turned into haphazard and feverish love bites, sucking and nipping at skin, blood vessels rising to the surface to form a permanent blush. Dan's fingers tugged at Phil's hair while his other hand working on digging his nails into the pale skin of Phil's back both actions earning a surprised groan from the other man.

It was then that Phil managed to slip forward on the already wet and slippery tiles, his head colliding with Dan’s before attempting to brace himself against the shower door, sending it flying open and both boys tumbling forward onto the bathroom floor atop of one another, completely naked and doubled over in laughter.

“That was sexy for zero point five seconds,” Dan gasped through giggles clutching his head, his whole frame wracked with laughter.

Phil was bright red, he shyly tucked his face down into Dan’s chest waiting for the blush and embarrassment to die down, realising that Dan wasn’t laughing at him, just the situation. He too quietly started to laugh looking up at Dan shaking his head slightly,

“Remind me to never try to be sexy again.”


	12. The Rapture of the Deep

**_Time will say nothing but I told you so,_**

**_Time only knows the price we have to pay;_ **

**_If I could tell you I would let you know._ **

**_\- W.H. Auden_ **

The flat had never been so lively as it was that night. The living room felt comfortably crammed with a handful of Phil’s closest friends. A house warming party had been Phil’s idea, of course, it had been. Dan was slowly beginning to open to the idea of having people in his life, of letting people in.

PJ had been the first to arrive, his wavy hair slightly askew and tousled, tucked under his arm was a stack of obscure board games. He greeted both Dan and Phil with a wide smile and a one-armed hug. Dan was slowly beginning to settle into PJ’s quirky mannerisms and begin to feel at home with them. He would even go as far as to call him a friend.

“I never thought I would live to see the day. Daniel Howell, actually being social and joining the rest of us back down on planet earth,” PJ mused as he kicked off his shoes and set down the games on their coffee table.

“I know, it surprised me too, but don’t push your luck, I can kick you out of my half of the house if I get sick of you,”

PJ faked a gasp, clutching his hand to his heart as if offended, before proceeding to look about the room, smirking faintly picking up knickknacks before laying out on the sofa, making himself at home.

“You guys can pick one of the games to keep as a house warming present, though I would suggest against monopoly. It can be a real relationship wrecker.”

Dan looked to Phil with slightly swollen brown eyes, quietly questioning if Phil had told PJ about the… shift, in their relationship dynamic. It had been several days since they had made it official. Phil wanted to make sure Dan could attend their housewarming party, even if he had been living in the flat for two years and so he made sure to pick a day where Dan was off work. 

Phil simply gave a quiet shake of his head as if to indicate that he hadn’t told PJ anything. Dan wouldn’t have minded if he had. They had both agreed that boyfriend was a comfortable term to use.

“Don’t look all freaked out, I called it happening eventually and you two were all touchy at the door. I might be crazy sometimes, but I’m not stupid.”

Dan and Phil seemed to quietly accept this, without much time for more conversation before their next guest arrived. Phil had moved to get the door, while Dan stayed on the sofa, leafing through the complex rule book of one of the games PJ had brought. All the while PJ was trying to explain every intrinsic detail of the game.

The woman at the door appeared small compared to the other three boys, though for all accounts her height was nothing short of average. She wore a wide grin, Dan found himself momentarily distracted by the gap in her teeth before moving to look at there a handful of gifts.

She greeted Phil with wide arms and a flurry of conversation before her eyes trailed over to PJ before landing on Dan. She shot him a wide smile and Dan stood, making his way over. He was antisocial at best, but he figured he should at least try to be kind to Phil’s friends. After all, PJ had turned out to be a nice guy that he could hold a conversation with and even at times, call a friend.

“Dan this is my friend Louise. Louise, this is my- um… Dan,” Phil introduced both boys still feeling slightly awkward about formalities.

Dan was surprised to be pulled into a bone crushing hug, almost not knowing how to react before settling on an awkward pat on the back, not that he could do too much with his arms practically pinned down.

“Phil’s told me so much about you, I haven’t seen him so happy in ages.”

She released Dan, causing him to huff out quietly then shoot her a friendly smile. He mumbled out some kind of excuse about it being nice to meet her too, and rattled off what little information he remembered Phil saying about her. Dan was always shy around new people, but at the end of the day, she was kind. She also harboured several of the awkward quirks Dan found within himself and didn’t seem to mind them being mirrored through someone else.

Before Dan knew it, he was sitting down with her looking through photos of her daughter presented on her phone. It was a quaint and cute kind of normal Dan had never expected to get in his lifetime.

Other guessed followed: a young girl with dyed silvery hair named Cat, a boy called Chris and then a small flurry of names Dan could scarcely remember. It wasn’t a large party, there were only about seven guests in total but it was enough for Dan. Phil seemed in his element, which wasn’t at all surprising since he was amongst his closest friends. What Dan felt more surprised about was how he seemed to assimilate seamlessly into this group.

Dan had to take a step back from himself. This was another moment he needed to remember. He took in every detail of the scene, a large cluster of adults all crammed around his small coffee table, soft drinks and assorted alcoholic beverages littering any space not occupied by board game paraphernalia, coasters be damned.

Dan was positioned with Phil and Louise on either side of him, PJ at the head of the table practically tearing his hair out anytime someone would make a mistake or be confused on the game's rules.  At one point, Chris had mumbled something about the game being convoluted and counted himself out before sweeping the board game off the table and pulling out several packs of cards from his backpack uttering about card games being enough for old and crabby men so it should be good enough for them to have a good time.

PJ turned a whiter shade of pale, then red with anger and blue in the face before turning back to his composed self. The look was priceless and had ended with Dan trying to hold back a rough cackle by burrowing his head into Phil’s shoulder and Phil letting out a rough wheezing laugh. It was a perfectly imperfect moment.

The night faded onwards, the conversation grew few and far between as most people were either too drunk or too tired to hold a real conversation. Dan didn’t seem to mind. He was several drinks in and was smiling more that night than Phil had seen him smile in months. His body held a tipsy kind of whimsy in his drunken stupor causing him to forget about any troubles which usually lay just beyond the forefront of his mind. Tonight, he was carefree. Tonight, only this night mattered.

By three in the morning, most of the guests had vacated the house, opposed to Chris, who had passed out on the sofa and PJ who was trying to wake him with little to no real response other than smacking the other man’s hand away and a slurry of incoherent mumblings. It took all three of the boys to get him off the sofa and down the sets of steps.

Night air brought some clarity, though not enough to let the man make his way home by himself. PJ groaned as his fingers fumbled with his phone, calling up a taxi while Phil supported Chris with one arm and Dan with another, who had come to realise that when drinking was involved, he was rather the lightweight.

“I had this dream once that I was a movie star but I could only act in films that were in black and white because colour hurt my eyes,” Chris was telling Dan, who was only half paying attention. He laughed anyway, though was unsure as to what he was laughing at.

“Phil told me he had a dream once where he had this rare disease where he couldn’t recognise faces and that everyone he saw just looked like Sarah Michelle Gellar.”

At this point Chris was doubled over with laughter, almost slipping over and face planting with the pavement. Dan joined in the laughing while PJ rolled his eyes, trying to yell their address over the cackling.

“I will drop both of you,” Phil groaned, his cheeks turning pink. Dan knew he wouldn’t.

“But you love me.”    

Drunk Dan seemed to decide this was a good time to put it out there. Sober Dan was going to kill him later for it. Phil was both bright pink from embarrassment and pale from the statement. He almost dropped both boys on the spot without the intent to. He even caught PJ giving a small chuckle against his phone’s receiver. Phil turned his attention back to Dan, quietly scooping the other boy’s fringe from his eyes and huffing in a silent, ‘what am I going to do with you,’ kind of way.

“But I love you,” Phil repeated softly and laughed as Dan burrowed his face into Phil’s neck, the mumbling of words was muffled, but Phil could swear he heard a ‘love you too’, somewhere in there.

PJ was too busy breathing down the neck of the nearest cab driver, pleading for them to pick him up while Chris was busy floating about on his own little planet. Moments after a taxi pulled in, a wide and brilliant smile of relief crossed over PJ’s face as he took Chris from Phil.

“We only live a few streets apart. I can take him from here, you two have fun.” It seemed like there was more weight to PJ’s words, like ‘have fun’ meant something entirely different to its conventional meaning.

Both Dan and Phil waved him off before Phil turned his attention back to Dan, chuckling to himself under his breath noticing how far gone Dan was. He leads the boy back into their building and watched as Dan sleepily began fumbling up the first flight of stairs, several times getting tripped up by his own feet. Phil groaned and grabbed Dan’s wrist to stop him from going any further.

“You are a safety hazard to the both of us. Come on, it’s my turn to piggyback you.” He insisted, bending over, knowing Dan must have been pretty far gone as he hardly put up a fight.

Dan simply clambered onto Phil’s back, burrowing his face back into the boy’s shoulder. Phil had a new-found appreciation for Dan carrying him to bed every night because the task of getting himself and Dan to their flat took twice as long with a hundred times more sweat.

Finally, Phil managed to let the boy down, allowing him to flop down onto the sofa, knowing he would kick up a fuss if he were placed in bed. Phil knew it would be only moments before he would let sleep take him, Dan was determined, but he could only fight his body for so long before the foundations began to crumble. Dan seemed to be fighting to keep his head up before he suddenly went pale. Phil instantly tensed with worry.

“You feeling okay?” He questioned, a hand reaching over to rub the younger boy’s back, trying to be soothing, though it likely came off as rougher than he had intended.

“I think I might puke,” Great.

Phil sighed and pulled Dan up again, making their way to the bathroom. He was seconds from heaving, though luckily it was a dry wretch. Phil reminded himself that for the sake of their floors he would keep a better eye on the lad next time he was drinking. That was when everything seemed to fall apart.

Dan looked up at him, his eyes holding a slightly glazed over look, Phil felt his own rage of sickness as he noticed blood beginning to ooze from his nose. That didn’t quite seem like normal drunk behaviour and with Dan’s feet quaking under him Phil knew something was deathly wrong.

“Dan, hey. Hey. Look at me for a minute, yeah? I’m going to clean you up, then we are going to bed, okay?’

Dan looked up, nodding his head. Phil realised, he would never usually agree to this and so, he was further gone than Phil could imagine. He had no time to fuss over Dan, he needed to get the boy down, he let him lean against the toilet bowl in case another bout of nausea hit. He scurried around the small bathroom, wetting their hand towel and placing it to stop Dan’s bleeding nose. This wasn’t normal. Crap. This wasn’t normal. A lump sat in the pit of his stomach as he waited for Dan’s confirmation that he was okay to stand again.

“Are you still feeling sick?” Phil question, his voice so soft it was almost inaudible.

“Not really. I think I’m okay,” Dan’s voice mirrored his softness, words slurring together.

He stood and in that instant, knew it was the wrong thing to do, a loud ringing wracked his ears, the world tilting on its axis as the smell of blood became overwhelming. His frame swayed and dropped, a blackened void swallowing his body, he felt like he was drowning. Again. He couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down. He wasn’t moving towards the ground anymore, it just felt like he was moving. Logically his brain said down. His body said up. His body said sideways. His body said it didn’t know how to feel.

He was out like a light before he could hit the ground.

***

Dan felt an odd kind of clarity when he found himself in the sanctity of his old nightmare. At least there he felt normal. Pale walls, like grim and grinning teeth, greeted him as an old friend while flowers brought his mortality into perspective.

He was ready to recreate the dream like a character in a play. He knew his lines, he knew his words. He knew what he had to do. This time, the dream seemed to start early. He was alone in the room. The world was a haze. There was a radio in the corner of the room playing some seventies pop hit. The other figures lay in their beds without a stir. It felt more like waking up in a morgue than in a hospital. There were flowers. They were fresh. He heard the song fade into a muffled news report followed by the weather. Apparently, it had been snowing non-stop for the better half of a long while. The most snowfall in a decade.

It was all he got of this new fraction of the dream before he let the blackness swallow him up. Instead of waking, however, he was face to face with the most familiar parts of his nightmare. He had more time to focus on the scene as it replayed. He noticed things about the ending of the dream, which before had been nothing more than a haze of sound and death now turned into more.

There was a conversation above him in-between the dying beeps of machinery. It mostly concerned technical, medical jargon, which Dan struggled to comprehend. It was then he heard his own voice, pleading, crying. He sounded broken. It was the kind of broken that couldn’t be fixed. It was as if someone hadn’t just shattered his heart they had obliterated it, then cremated the shattered ashes and sent them loose to the wind. There was no coming back from that kind of broken.

He awoke with his body, wracked with sobs.

***

Upon waking his mind took it’s time to catch up. He wasn’t in a bed, as he would expect. He instead felt his body shivering from a bitter cold on the left side of his body. He soon came to and realised it was a tile floor. A groan escaped his throat as he attempted to speak, he was still quietly sobbing. He only then realises Phil was holding him as his body stiffened.

“Thank fuck,” The voice came and Dan’s eyes widened as they sprang to life.

“Did I just hear Phil Lester say fuck?” His voice came out as a fractured croak.

“You are hearing Phil Lester at his wit's end. You passed out on me. You’ve been out for ages, I was about to call an ambulance, so I think I deserve to say fuck this one time and we can both just let it slide because… fuck,” Phil’s voice cracked, sounding genuinely hurt. 

“You scared me so much. You need to… sleep. Please, for me. This can’t be any good for your body. I’m sure of it and I can’t sit here if that happens again. I can’t… I won’t sit here and watch that,” Phil was pale, panting and out of breath.

“Every time I go to bed, I see you dying. I don’t see people dying, I fucking see you. So please, stop asking me to watch that over and over again because seeing it once breaks my fucking heart enough.”

In that moment Dan was wholeheartedly sober, any alcohol in his bloodstream seemed to flee the scene because Phil was pale and cursing and his world was still tilted.

“It’s a dream, it’s not happening. If you don’t sleep… I don’t know what will happen to you, please, I don’t make you do anything. I don’t make you talk about anything that you don’t want to talk about. I don’t push you to talk to me or be with me, but I’m asking you to just start bloody looking after yourself a little.”

Dan didn’t know how to explain the frustration, which built in his chest. He felt like screaming from frustration, but instead, he remained utterly quiet his hands shaking.

“You know from first-hand experience that my dreams seem to come true.”

His eyes were locked on Phil’s hands, those hands, which were sometimes his hands. He quietly reached out and touched them, quietly drawing against his skin. He knew these hands so well. He didn’t wish to live in a world without these hands.

“I’ve been dreaming it too, kind of,” Phil chipped in, doing nothing at all to settle his nerves.

“And?” Dan pushed.

Silence settled between them. The only sound that could be heard was their leaking faucet. The drops colliding with porcelain. The clock in the other room ticking. It was that kind of quiet.

“And I’m scared but scared isn’t going to do anything so I’m trying to tell myself I’m not. I could die today or tomorrow or a month from now or ten years from now. I don’t know and neither do you. You worrying about it isn’t going to fix it.”

“You don’t have any idea what it’s like. I close my eyes, I see you dying. I smell coffee and it reminds me of you and I know that I’m not going to survive losing you because you are my good thing. You are my one good thing. My only one. I see my brother every time I shower, every time it rains, every time I go home, every time I see someone who looks like him. I think about my friend every time I think about school or about home. I think about the people on The Underground every bloody time I take the subway. I just want to stop thinking about every bloody thing that’s ever gone wrong in my life and you help me do that but if I lose you… that’s it. I’ve lost my one good thing.”

The silence was so long Dan lost track of time. He then felt a warm body move down to cuddle beside him. It wasn’t at all practical. If you ask him, it was bloody stupid. They were both going to get hypothermia on the bathroom floor, but he didn’t say anything and neither did Phil. They just lay there, looking one another over. Dan thought that up until this point he felt as though he was seconds from a panic attack. Now he felt himself calming as they just lay there and stared.

“Please, let’s talk about this in the morning. For now, please just give me one night where we both sleep and if you have bad dreams you can know when you wake up I’m going to be here.”

“It’s cold,” Dan whispered, never taking his eyes from Phil.

“Would you like to get up and go to bed then?” Dan shook his head.

“I still feel dizzy,” He professed.

Phil moved closer, strewing an arm over Dan’s waist and sighing, pulling them both into one another and holding each other tightly.

“Then, for now, let’s be the two warm things left in this room.”


	13. Easy Mode and Cheat Codes

**_“Yours is the light by which my spirit's born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.”_ **

**_― E.E. Cummings_ **

The morning came as mornings did, slowly. It brought warmth to the otherwise cold bathroom. In the moment of waking from another nightmare, Dan learnt that sleeping on the floor could really kill your back. Fuck, he was starting to sound old.

Phil was already awake, but he hadn’t yet made the choice to move. He just lay on the ground, keeping his arm mindlessly splayed over Dan’s waist, tapping away at some game he had readily available on his phone. Dan took a moment to notice how familiar this odd situation felt and could practically feel the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Morning,” He breathed, trying not to let his morning breath seep out from his lips.

Phil looked down for the first time noticing Dan was awake, he reached down to brush Dan’s curling fringe from his eyes. Dan enjoyed the sensation despite his borderline throbbing headache. He wouldn’t fool himself into thinking this day, and the conversations that were to follow would be altogether pleasant, he wasn’t that naïve. He did, however, enjoy that moment. It was a small fraction of time where everything was okay.

“Good morning,” Phil breathed back, moving to sit up and groaning faintly.

There was an unspoken moment where they both seemed to decide that, if this were to happen again, both men would at least manage to retreat to the sofa before passing out. It seemed like a sensible concept. Dan sat soon after, whimpering as his new-found hangover started to settle in. His mouth held the rank taste of vomit and his skin crawled.

“I’m calling it, we need coffee, breakfast and a shower before any real conversation is going to happen,” Dan uttered watching as Phil nodded in agreement, both boys seemed okay with this concept, considering on a usual day Phil was uncharacteristically cranky before his morning cup of coffee while Dan, Dan was always cranky.

***

The conversation which followed spanned the length of over an hour, lots of frustrated groaning, eye-rolling and stating of the other party ‘just not getting it’ but at the end of the day, they both did.

“Life is a series of moments. I don’t want to be too busy counting them down to remember to live them,” Phil had stated, giving Dan a small moment of clarity.

If he was dying, he was dying, not in the conventional sense. There was no slow-moving tumour, eating him away from the inside out. He was just dying the way everyone else was dying. Slowly, with time and a question mark left on the number of days to live them. He begged Dan not to dwell on something, which couldn’t be helped.

For once in his life, Dan decided to take someone’s advice. It wasn’t instantaneous. There was no quick fix to what he had been feeling over the years. He couldn’t suddenly sleep like a baby. He couldn’t forget all the bad things that still dwelled in his life. He could just focus on other things when the nightmares became too horrific.

***

Dan was in his room, pretending to sleep, trying to sleep. He had just woken from a nightmare and sleeping on his own no longer felt like something he wished to do, sleeping at all no longer felt natural and his room brought no comfort. All he could think at this time was how Phil was two walls away, sleeping under the same roof. Phil was comfort. Dan was a scared child with night terrors.

He swallowed his pride and rose from his bed, leaving his covers behind. London was beginning to grow hot. As hot as London got and with their flat, lacking any form of air conditioning he thought that maybe even sleeping on the bathroom floor might be better than under his own covers. Still, he craved body heat. When he became so attached to the older boy, Dan could never guess. It didn’t happen overnight, yet he couldn’t pinpoint when it had happened. He and Phil had grown like vines, into one another without even realising it. To untangled themselves now would be almost fatal.

After stumbling through his bedroom, into the hallway and over several of Phil’s potted plants Dan found himself standing in the open doorway of Phil’s room. The boy must have only been half asleep because as Dan appeared, he yawned softly and raised his head from his pillow, reaching over blindly for his glasses.

“Nightmare?” Phil guessed without Dan even having to speak.

Dan acted like a mute and nodded his head in silent confirmation. Phil moved over, allowing up just enough free space in his bed for a Dan sized figure to lay. Again, Dan swallowed his pride and slid under the covers with Phil, the older boy’s arms snaked around him.

“How can you be in the mood to cuddle when it’s this hot?” Dan mumbled as he moved closer into Phil’s body, burrowing his face into Phil’s pajama shirt. It smelled oddly of sugared cereal.

“Were you awake because you were eating my cereal as a midnight snack… again?”

“When did I start dating Sherlock Holmes?” Phil countered with a sleepy laugh, his voice was always slightly deeper when he was sleepy.

“Cheeky bastard, that’s my bloody cereal.”

“Sharing is caring.”

It was impossible to be mad at Phil for more than ten seconds so Dan just grumbled and smacked Phil’s chest. The hit wasn’t solid enough to cause any actual pain. He was a toddler throwing a tantrum. Laying with Phil under the covers in the heat made Dan only more sticky and sweaty, but he didn’t want to leave for his own room. He wanted to live moment by moment and just let himself have this moment.

“It is kind of hot, though… for cuddling,” Phil uttered softly with a quiet chuckle.

Dan rolled his eyes and moved over slightly from Phil’s side, groaning and looking up at the roof, reminding himself again they needed to fix the bloody crack there. They both lay side by side, but neither slept.

“How long has it been since you watched the sun rise?” Phil questioned softly, his eyes still fixed to the roof.

“I hardly ever sleep through the night; you really think it’s been that long since I’ve seen the sun rise?” Dan asked, some old habits of his sarcastic mannerisms never did seem to die.

“I mean,” Phil began to correct.

“How long has it been since you have actually sat down and paid attention to it? I figure you hardly ever leave the house. Why don’t we watch the sunrise?”

Phil looked wholeheartedly serious and for once Dan felt his heart stir, and for once he felt a jolt of excitement for a mundane task, such as watching the sun rise.

“Do I have to leave the house?” Dan tease, not wanting to come off as overly eager but Phil seemed to see right through him.

“Not necessarily,” Was the cheeky reply.

 

***

Dan had never realised the top floor of his apartment complex had a sitting area. He supposed that was how little attention he paid to his everyday life. He had never been very observant.

It was still late enough for there to be stars, hardly visible when mixed with the ever-brightening sky and the London light pollution, but they were there. The stars. Stars were the kind of beautiful people took advantage of, they were always there, but people never bothered to marvel at them.

Dan had made it up to the top of the roof with Phil’s duvet in tow, wrapped haphazardly around his shoulders while Phil simply sat down close enough to the edge of the building for the street to be visible, but far enough away that he would find great difficulty stumbling off the edge.

Dan and Phil took their time to settle, winding down quietly together. Neither spoke, not really. They just sat, looking up at the sky with the duvet around both of their shoulders. It might have been hot inside, but with the newly provided wind rushing through London’s rooftops there proved to be just enough of a chill for a duvet to combat. It looked like Sumer might not be in full swing after all.

“Have you ever wanted a pet?” Phil asks out of nowhere as the sun begins to turn a brighter shade of blue.

Dan feels himself nodding his head before he could even fully process the question at hand. He had always loved pets, but their landlord didn’t like animals, so he was at a loss. His mother and father still had a dog, and fuck did he love dogs. They were stupid creatures really and never lived as long as you would want them to. They were expensive and couldn’t really do anything for you other than shit on your carpet and eat up your tax money on food. They chewed the sofa if you left them alone long enough.

Dan really wanted a dog despite this. Mostly because they would cuddle with you on lazy mornings. They could manage to make you happy when you were otherwise miserable. They had wide eyes and to them, the world was perfect as long as there was food to eat and games to play. He supposed all of these things could relate to Phil anyway. So, he was doing alright.

“Yeah, I have thought about it. I like dogs, cats I just relate to way too much. They're either wanting you to pet them, feed them, or for you to fuck right off. The landlord would kill us, though.”

Phil hummed as if he was thinking about this.

“Maybe we could have a fish or sea monkeys. We might even be able to get away with a hamster.”

“No hamsters… ever. Bad experiences,” Dan chuckled quietly and notice Phil looking at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Do I want to know?” Phil questions, though he was laughing like he already knew he didn’t.

The sun was beginning to rise and could be seen peeking through gaps in neighbouring buildings. Dan quietly watched as the sun began to light up Phil’s face, pale skin illuminating in the morning sun. Sumer might not have arrived yet, but in that minute, he was sure of one thing, with the sun bouncing off his snow bird’s cheek he knew, it was the end of winter.

Dan was surprised at how long he and Phil stayed up there on that roof. They watched the sunrise, talking about animals and the utterly ridiculous hoops they would have to jump through to sneak a dog into their flat. They ended up settling on something which seemed to quietly surprise the both of them. 

“We could always move to a place in the country, have ten dogs or a farm or something.”

Dan was laughing at the mere image his mind conducted. He couldn’t imagine the two of them, such engrained city people who hardly ever take the time to go outside at all, living on a farm. Maybe they had been on the roof too long. Maybe Phil had gotten heat stroke. Maybe Dan had too, because it almost sounded like a good idea.

“Can we just have like… a flock of shiba inus instead of… actual farm animals because even in this weird arse alternate reality, I don’t think I could handle it.”

Phil was giving Dan this kind of cheeky lopsided grin, which Dan couldn’t work out. He wasn’t used to being looked at the way Phil looked at him. Sure, he had people who cared about him, who loved him, but if, say his mother, gave him that type of look Dan would be severely freaked the fuck out. It was a look that was only okay from Phil.

“Why are you looking at me like that, you spork?” He found himself questioning and was utterly content with the response.

Phil moved closer and quickly pressed a kiss to his lips. It was soft and quick. A surprise peck, which is nice. When he had kissed people in the past, it always felt like kissing was something to be done desperately. Kissing was meant to be like a starving man’s first taste of food. This, on the other hand, was simply like breathing, or a cool blast of air on a hot day. It didn’t feel like a need, but a want.

“What was that for?” Dan questioned, though he was almost sure he knew the answer.

“I wanted to do it, so I did. Simple logic.”

“Very simple. Much logic. Is snogging on the roof really your thing? Do I need to remind you of the shower incident because I don’t wish to be butt naked and impaled on our outside fence,” Dan teased.

Phil was blushing again, a rough groan escaped his lips. He shoved Dan lightly, more to show he was offended, opposed to actually doing it with any malicious intent.

“Shut up about that, I still can’t believe that happened.”

 “Well, you can’t just give up when a situation goes to shit. Otherwise, I would have given up a few years ago. Though I would recommend us toning down the difficulty and maybe giving it a go on easy mode before taking the roof on as a boss battle.”

Dan was talking about sex like it was a video game. Anyone else would have thought he was a loser, but not Phil. Phil was smiling ear to ear.

“Easy mode with all the cheat codes” He agreed quietly.

Easy mode.

***

“Turn around,” Dan groaned, surprised how much he felt like a much younger version of himself. He felt like a teen again, suddenly both terrified and bulletproof.

“Do I really have to turn around?” Phil asked from the other side of the room, he stood looking equal parts nervous and calm. It was an odd combination, which didn’t seem humanly possible.

“Yes, for like five bloody seconds, okay?” Dan mumbled as he wriggled himself out of his tee shirt.

“You know, this would be a lot easier if we weren’t fussing around. You being nervous is making me nervous… Why are you so nervous?” Why was he so nervous?

Now Dan was standing shirtless and awkward in Phil’s bedroom, feeling like a complete tit, with Phil’s back to him. He found a groan escaping from his lips before he had the time to capture it. He knows he shouldn’t feel nervous.

“I don’t know,” Dan huffed, though he had a feeling he knew exactly why.

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“I want to…  I’ve just… I’ve never…”

Dan was glad Phil’s back was to him, so the other lad couldn’t see the spread of violent red, which rushed to his cheeks. He heard Phil exhale and watched as the older boy looked over his shoulder. He took in Dan’s body. Dan wasn’t a movie star. He didn’t have bloody washboard abs and perfectly tan skin. He was just average, though Phil wasn’t looking at him like he was average. Phil was looking at him as if he was anything but average.

“You’ve never-” Phil began, but Dan quickly cut him off,

“Not with a guy I haven’t…” Phil's expression softened and he rolled his eyes.

“You could have just said so, idiot,” He noted crossing the room.

Dan didn’t put up a fight as Phil moved closer and started to kiss him, starting at his lips and trailing downwards. Gooseflesh erupted over Dan’s skin when the boy reached his neck and the rest of his body seemed to stand to attention. Phil paused at the hollow of Dan’s clavicle. He seemed to like the spot as he lingered there most. Phil raised his head slightly to look Dan over,

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. If this is all you want to do now, then that’s cool. If you want to do more that’s cool too. We can work it out, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Dan whispered and ducked his head down to kiss the other boy.

He let himself relax. It took time, but Phil didn’t seem to mind. There was lots of kissing, lots of whispering. Somewhere in between them standing in the corner of the room and them finally reaching Phil’s bed, they had lost their clothes. Dan couldn’t pinpoint the exact time it happened. He was too busy thinking of other things. Now that he was growing more relaxed he had let his hands explore. One of his hands was in Phil’s hair, the other on the small of his back. Phil was on top of him, applying some pressure to his body, pushing him down into the bed. It was new. Dan thought maybe he liked it.

“Have I ever told you, I think you’re kind of beautiful?” Dan asked quietly then felt stupid immediately after.

During foreplay, people wanted to hear how sexy they were, how hot or fit they were. All Dan’s mind had seemed to go to was beautiful. Maybe it was just because he was used to having sex with girls and girls didn’t mind being called beautiful under any circumstance. Phil didn’t seem put off, in fact, he was actually smiling ten times wider that Dan thought he had ever seen. It was quite the sight, Phil’s pale white skin almost matching that of the bedsheets, his jet-black hair plastered to his forehead from sweat.

“Did you just say…” Dan was grinning now too, and cut him off,

“Shut up. I did don’t make fun of me,” He blushed burrowing into Phil’s shoulder.

Phil’s body started to shake with a quiet laughter before he used his own face to nuzzle Dan’s from its hiding place.

“I just never pegged you as a romantic, that’s all. I think you’re kind of beautiful too,” He assured, leaning over and pressing a kiss to his lips. It moved from soft to deep and rough.

After giggling and fumbling through scattered kisses and having an overly technical conversation (still managing to laugh all the way through) about the logistical aspects of what was to follow. Phil ended up on top of him because that’s what felt right. He ended up slowly walking him through things, somehow managing not to make Dan feel awkward for having to ask Phil to stop several times.

Pain wasn’t exactly something Dan had associated with sex. He knew the first few times a girl would have sex, it would hurt, but he had never been anyone’s first time so he never had to worry about it. He had never realised that it could actually hurt until now. It wasn’t anything unbearable. It was just a small, uncomfortable gasp of pain followed by several explosions of friction and pleasure. 

When he felt ready, he let Phil crawl inside his skin and felt for a moment his mind leaving his body as the other boy continued to whisper sweet nothings.

“I Love you,”

“God, you’re beautiful,”

“So hot,”

The words seemed to ground Dan and hurt quickly melted down into pleasure. He let Phil make a home inside him and quietly hoped that from that moment on, he would visit it often.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hope you enjoyed this chapter, smut isn't something I find myself 'good' at writing so I hope this chapter wasn't too insufferable for you. I feel like a lot of fan fiction tends to overly sexualize 'first' times. So I wanted it to be a little quirky and awkward because to me that is more realistic. Each to their own, though, but please tell me what you thought, I love comments.


	14. An Atheist’s Prayer

**_“The search for God is absurd?”  
_****“It is if everyone dies alone.”**  
_**“Does that scare you?”**_  
 **“I don't want to be alone.”**

**-Donnie Darko**

Morning unfolded just like the days had passed, in a haze. Dan arose to the shifting of heat from his side. He had gotten used to many things since Phil moved in. He had gotten used to ‘sleeping’ in Phil’s room. Sleeping was a word Dan still bore disdain for. He wouldn’t call the hours of sleep he got restful. They were the usual. The constant cold sweat-inducing nightmares, which he could never seem to shake. One would think after so much time living in the same nightmare you would become impervious to the horror of the thing. Sadly, that didn’t seem to be the case. He did sleep, though. Not as much as most, but enough to get Phil off his back. It was enough time that his health wasn’t at immediate threat. That’s all he could give, so Phil didn’t ask for more. Though Dan would catch him staring when the other boy thought he was sleeping, a worried look painted on his face.

Time had passed, seasons melted away. Sumer moved to autumn and autumn to winter again. They had met in winter.  Christmas had passed with them together, crammed around a fireplace and a well-used Christmas tree at Dan’s family home.  Now the New Year was depressingly in full swing.

That day, Dan had awoken with a perplexed look on his face. Phil was shifting from his side. Dan’s brow furrowed ever so slightly. Phil looked down, noticing Dan was awake, his face instantly lightening. His face bore an early morning scruff, obviously not having shaved yet. Dan kind of liked it.

“Where are you going?” Dan questioned his voice coming out slightly more desperate than he intended.

Even now Dan was scared at the amount of attachment, he felt for this boy. If they were to sever he wasn’t sure how much of himself would be left. It couldn’t be healthy. He begged his inner self to be sensible. So far it didn’t seem to be listening and Phil wasn’t helping matters at all. Dan always had to have some level of detachment. That was, after all, who he was. He was cold and detached. Though he was even beginning to question that about himself these days.

He would wake up, in the morning sun like this, Phil in his bed or he in Phil’s bed. The both of them, in their bed. Light shining through their curtains, through the dream catchers Phil had hung, bouncing off crystals Phil had set on the windowsill, reflecting scattered rainbows about the room.

“I’ve got to get to work. Some of us have occupations at sensible times,” Phil reasons and Dan feels the need to resist rolling his eyes.

“And did you really feel the need to wake me?”

“You did that all on your own Danny boy. Don’t blame me. Though it’s good you did. I can say happy year-a-versary at a reasonable time.”

Maybe Dan was sleepier than he thought because he couldn’t recall that today was meant to be an important day. He wasn’t the best with dates, but he could normally remember important events. Today hadn’t been one in his mind and so, inner turmoil ensued. Should he have brought Phil a gift? Had he really forgotten their-

“Wait a second,” He interjected.

“What the bloody hell are you going on about? We didn’t start dating in January”

Phil shot him back a look of offence, one that would be quite convincing if Dan hadn’t known the lad for so long. He knew Phil’s real pissed off face. He knew the way his nose would crinkle and the lower lip would slightly drop outwards. This was a look of faux offence.

“I know that you idiot,” Phil countered.

“But we did meet in January. Hence it being a year-a-versary and not an anniversary. You still have a while to wait for that one.”

God, he hadn’t thought about that. Maybe he should have gotten Phil something. Okay, no. He definitely should have had the foresight to get Phil something. Maybe he could do it while the other lad was at work.

“I knew that,” He uttered in a half unsure mannerism proving that he had, in fact, not remember at all and was faking it.

This time Phil was the one to roll his eyes, but he didn’t look mad. It took a lot to get Phil mad. In the twelve months of the two knowing one another Dan had only seen this a handful of times and never to an extremity. Most of the time it was cursing himself for running into an open cupboard door, even if it had been Dan who left the cupboard door open. That was just who Phil was. Dan, had his common and fitful bouts of rage, mostly at a situation, more than directed at a person, stupid things like missing a train or oversleeping through an alarm. With a handful of words from Phil, Dan would crumble back into his quiet submission. That’s just who Dan was.

 “Yeah well, I really do have to get to work before PJ kills me for being late for the third time this week, or more likely kills you. He knows it’s your fault,” Dan scoffed rolling onto his side and burying his face in the covers.

“He knows nothing, he probably wouldn’t have even noticed. His head's planted firmly in the clouds.”

Dan felt the covers being tugged from him and an exasperated groan escaped his lips. Phil was smirking cheekily at him from the foot of the bed.

“Hey, that’s my best mate you’re talking about. He wants to see you too, by the way. He wants you to compose the music for his next film project.”

Dan found a groan escaping his throat. He hated to play music for others, surprisingly, since it was his job. It was different if the people who listened were strangers. He didn’t have to see the people who heard his music on a daily basis. For the most part, they also couldn’t tell a wrong note from a right one. Playing for Phil’s best friend- well, and his own, if he was being honest. That was nerve wracking.

“Did you tell him I’m not very good?” Dan asked, looking Phil’s way again, as he reached down in an attempt to grab his sheets once more.

 “I told him the truth. That you are bloody amazing and that you will try and tell him otherwise.”

“I hate you,” Dan was smiling all the while, not a trace of vitriol in his voice. That was one of their secret sayings. Dan wasn’t sure how it came about, or even if it was too healthy. ‘I hate you’, could mean just as much as ‘I love you’ if it was said in the right way.

“I hate you too,” Phil echoed back, leaning over and placing a kiss to Dan’s cheek. God. Dan would never get used to this.

Dan leant over, Phil’s smell quickly swallowed him up. He let himself linger close as he wrapped his arm around the older boy haphazardly. There was next to no space between them. No room to move nor breath. That was fine with Dan. He didn’t need to move, everything he needed was living in that little bubble of space. This was his world. He had watched it terraform and settle. This was his home. This small bubble of space filled with Phil’s body and his. Something in the air on this morning caused him to stay extra close, for longer than he should. His muscles seemed to lock in place, seemed to scream, ‘don’t go’.

“I’ve got to go now, really.”

Phil broke their hold and Dan felt the tether locking his and Phil’s bodies together sever. He was being moronic. He shifted back, let Phil go. He watched the boy scoop up his wallet and Oyster card from his bedside table, then disappear into the hallway. Moments later he heard a door shutting.

Dan sunk back down into the bed. He no longer wanted to get up, but sleeping again was impossible. He just lay there, looking up at the cracked roof. He let out a groan of frustration, flinging his pillow at the ceiling, watching it coiled. A small cloud of dust fell as the crack fractured and grew. Dan quietly cursed at himself, rolling out of bed and making his way out into the light of day.

***

Dan had a strategic method to the way in which he would make breakfast every morning. It began with making Phil a coffee and himself a hot chocolate. Seems this morning was lacking in the Phil category, he only made hot chocolate. If felt wrong, sure he did it all the time, but this morning, in particular, it didn’t seem to sit right.

He moved onto the second step, getting himself (and usually Phil) cereal. He would pour the cereal first, then the milk, obviously. He wasn’t an animal. It was on this second step that he came to realise something new about the kitchen. Sitting atop the bench was an arrangement of flowers. At first, Dan thought nothing of it, Phil was always buying bloody new house plants, their flat had become inundated with them. It only drew his attention when he realises, this wasn’t the first time he had seen these flowers. He saw them, this exact arrangement in different stages of decay every night.

His blood ran cold. The world tilted. His hearing was the first thing to go, all bells and buzzers. The second was his vision. It started to haze around the edges, so much so that passing out seemed inevitable. But he didn’t.

Dan stood his ground in the kitchen realising at that moment he had come face to face with the day to end all days and he hadn’t even said goodbye. His feet grew roots and planted them so far into the ground they stretched down past his own floor, through the three flights below him and set up home in the underground. He was locked in place. His mind couldn’t hold any coherent thought other than a frenzied slur of curses. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Dan dug himself from the floor and began to move, without knowing what he was moving too. Phil was in trouble, maybe it had already happened. Would he feel it? There is this funny thing about death. When people close to you die, you just expect to know they are gone in the instant they go, like some deep otherworldly bullshit. Dan had learned from experience that it wasn’t the case. People left without leaving so much as a whisper for those who were left behind.

Dan grabbed his coat and phone before he plummeted out the front door and down several flights of steps. His fingers were furiously slamming against the keypad, trying to call Phil. He wasn’t answering. Why the fuck wasn’t he answering?

Outside the streets were littered with snow. It wasn’t yet thick. It was the kind which made every slightly slippery surface an utter war zone for a clumsy six-foot-two man in a hurry. He called Phil a second time. No answer. He picked up the pace, running the path he knew Phil would walk to get to work. The ground began to shake.

Earth cracked in two. That’s what it felt like. Dan imagined himself standing on one side of a giant ravine and Phil somewhere on the other but that’s not what happened. Not really. The world didn’t crack. It just seemed to shake, but the shaking didn’t come from the ground but the sky. Maybe Dan was disorientated. He looked up to see the sky falling. A large plane soared overhead, far too close for comfort. He watched it pass, his body again turning solid. It seemed to collide with a building several miles away. The snow in the air mixed with ash and fire.

This couldn’t be happening. It looked like an end of days movie. Planes didn’t just fall out of the sky and crash into London. Yet that’s what had just happened. Parts of the city were asunder, there was the seemingly constant blaring of sirens. Dan was running with no real direction. He called Phil again. No answer. He called PJ.

“Hello?” The voice sounded shaken, gasping for breath.

“Peej? Please tell me I’ve gone mental and where you are a plane hasn’t just crashed into the streets of London.” He would rather be crazy.

“That’s what the bloody noise was?” He wasn’t crazy.

“Yeah, that’s what it was. Has Phil come into work yet?”

The other line was dead for so long Dan question if the zombie apocalypse had dawned on them. If PJ was too busy getting his brains munched on to supply a coherent response. No such luck it seemed as after an eternity he replied,

“It’s going to be today isn’t it?” That didn’t answer his question.

“For fuck's sake PJ, has Phil come into work yet?”

“No.”

No. Of course not. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

 Dan hung up and took off running. He weaved his way through shocked bystanders in the streets, marvelling at the fiery debris and carnage. Parts of the city were ablaze, and Dan, he was running head-on into it.

He had almost reached the apex of the mess when a hand clasped around his wrist and towed him to one side with such vigour that Dan’s knees almost crumbled beneath him. He came face to face with a snow-splattered and ashen snowbird.

“What the bloody hell are you doing?” Phil sputtered, his blue eyes swollen to the size of dinner plates.

Dan had only then realised to irregular his breathing had become, his chest rising and falling in a rough and shaky seizer. Phil looked just as shocked. Around them people were moving, this way and that, buildings were tumbling from their framework. Fire was being smothered in the snow and water supplied by a fire engine, which seemed to have materialised out of thin air.

“What the bloody hell are you doing here?” Dan echoed back, though he knew.

He was here because ‘here’ was where he was meant to be. What he couldn’t wrap his head around was how Phil was okay and still here. How he was breathing. How he wasn’t lying in a hospital bed. He hadn’t done anything. Dan couldn’t change the future, even when he was trying, but today, he had just been trying to get to the scene of the disaster so he could get the rest over with.

Phil started laughing and at first, it had almost fooled Dan enough to think it was a humorous laugh, but then his shoulders started shaking and Dan came to realise it was a delirious kind of laughing. He was going into shock. Dan was quick to act, removing his jacket and slinging it over Phil’s shoulders as he dragged the boy in the opposite direction. He rubbed the boy’s back in robotic circular motions because he had never expected to be here.

He thought he had seen every possible option and outcome for this day, but this wasn’t it. This seemed wrong.

They made their way through the wreckage until they found a place one might consider safe, the crash was a distant cloud of smoke. It took his breath away to dwell on the thoughts for too long. Phil was still shaking. Dan didn’t know what to do. He was always the one being comforted, not the one giving the comfort. He found the nearest pavement, the two of them falling into a heap of crumpled flesh and shaking bones.

“It’s okay,” Dan managed faintly. They were fine. Things should feel fine, but they didn’t, nothing felt fine. Fine seemed like the opposite word to describe this situation.

They sat there, the snow falling harder now, both boys began to shiver, but they were too shocked to move. Dan just held Phil quietly, his own bare skin began to turn so pale it looked like bone. Dan’s phone rang in his pocket again and again. Dan moved to switch it off and looked around. The world was in a state of panic.

It was the type of scene you would see on the telly, chaos on the streets. It was the type of scene you thought you understood until you were in it. Dan didn’t understand anything. Phil had stopped manically laughing, stopped talking altogether. Some kind of paramedic walked past, checked the two of them over and pushed them to go inside, asking either of them if they had someone to call. Neither of them was in much of a position to take charge. Dan tried, but everything seemed to be coming out in a hazy jumble.

He wasn’t sure how he and Phil got back to their flat. He knew he never let the older boy go for a second. He knew he turned the heating on in their flat as soon as they got home in an attempt to keep Phil warm. He had no clue how freezing he had been until he attempted to make them coffee, dropping the cups and scolding his hands from the violent, cold tremors running over his skin.

Somehow he and Phil ended up next to one another on the sofa, with coffee. Dan wasn’t sure how it got there. His burns were also tended to. He wasn’t sure who did it. Phil had just been staring into space. He looked like he was looking at nothing and everything. It was like the universe spilt out in front of him and Dan couldn’t see it. Dan could just see the mess of now.

“Talk to me,” He managed to choke out.

“I don’t know what to talk about,” Phil sounded far away.

“Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours. I might be borderline psychic… But I’m not a mind reader.”

Phil didn’t laugh. Dan didn’t think he realised it was meant to be a joke.

They stayed there in palpable silence. Dan didn’t talk for so long because when he spoke next he wanted to say something that meant something, yet his mind was failing miserably at grasping for suitable words.

“I love you,”

 It meant something, but it felt feeble, breakable and not at all tangible enough for this situation. How maybe people in the history of earth had said some form of ‘I love you’? It didn’t seem enough. It seemed overused. What he meant was a feeling, one deep in his stomach. He didn’t know how to put this into words.

When he was with Phil the world had so much more colour. It was like without him everything was drab. Dan thought he and Phil had been like puzzle pieces, but he had come to realise that day, while he might be Phil’s puzzle piece, Phil was his linchpin. Without him he wouldn’t go back to being a piece, he would crack himself into scattered ashes. This definitely wasn’t healthy. One person shouldn’t be your world. Yet he was. Even in the beginning, before Dan had been willing to admit it.

“Phil?”

Dan wondered if it was only atheists who spoke their lover’s name like a prayer.

“Dan?”

Maybe not.

“You don’t have to talk to me… if you don’t want to, but I would like for you to talk to me… because I feel like you need to talk to me.”

Dan could see the cogs in Phil’s brain running wild. Dan wondered if this was something he did a lot, internalise things. He was always the one listening and Dan, always the one speaking. Maybe Dan had been selfish not to notice this before. He was a snowbird with a broken wing and Dan, he just felt like a blackened nothing. A useless, non-corporeal thing.

“I think I convinced myself I was okay with the idea of dying until I thought I was dying. Now I’m just…” Phil’s voice trailed off.

He went back to looking out into nothing but his nose scrunched up in an attempt to hold back the sob Dan could see rising in his chest. Dan did nothing more but hold out his hand. Phil took it quietly and flipped Dan’s hand over in his, again and again, taking in every inch of it.

“I would miss cereal and anime in the mornings. I would miss hearing you play piano at night. I would miss my mental best friend. I would miss Buffy… It sounds stupid, but I would miss a TV show that ended over ten years ago. I would miss coffee and morose boys in coffee shops with brown eyes and brown hair. I would miss you… fuck I would miss you.” Phil was breathing unevenly.

“I would miss you and I would worry so much because I know what it would do to you. It’s like back when we first started dating, first met one another. I’m always worried about you, watching to make sure you get enough sleep, eat enough. That’s how you were before we met, if anything happens… I know what will happen and I don’t like it.”

Dan looked up in surprise. He wasn’t sure he had ever heard Phil speak this deeply. He didn’t think Phil was a shallow person by any means, but in the same mouthful, he hadn’t realised that he too seemed to think things and over think things. Dan was known to be the constant stoic thinking, lost in his own mind, but it was starting to seem like Phil was more that way inclined than he had expected. He was also cursing, which was very out of character. Who was this boy and why had it taken Dan so long to meet this side of him?

“Because you are so bloody self-destructive. You don’t sleep enough. You don’t eat enough if you are thinking too much. You tried to take up smoking a couple of months ago even though you have told me a thousand times you don’t get why people smoke, and it reminds you of that time you snogged a girl who tasted like cigarettes. I know it was because you figured it would… you know. You’re so stupid.”

Dan didn’t know how this conversation went from fearing dying to Dan being an idiot. He supposed maybe they were having a fight, but it didn’t feel much like a fight. It just felt like a catharsis, like Phil was saying things he had needed to say for a very long time.

They then lapsed into silence and Dan quietly looked down to where Phil was still holding his hand despite everything. He sighed, running his thumb over Phil’s flesh. He didn’t know how to say that things were going to be okay when he was in the same house with his nightmare flowers and the sky was falling.

Dan turned on his phone, spending time responding to phone calls from PJ, his parents and even Phil’s mother. It seemed like what happened was on the news. Of course, it was. They were debating whether it was a freak accident or something more sinister. Neither would have surprised Dan. The world had been going to shit for quite some time, it was just when you were locked in your own bubble of middle-class English living, it was easy to forget that this type of thing was happening all over the world every day. He didn’t think too much about it. That would only cause another crisis. Maybe that was selfish too.

He dealt with all of this then turned to Phil, pulling the boy’s feet into his lap and massaging his calves, trying to get him to come back to him. Get his Phil back. Phil dragged his eyes back to Dan and sighed faintly. Dan was scared, but this time, it wasn’t his turn. He didn’t have the right today.

“Hey, babe?”

Pet names were a rarity between the two of them, but when Dan would use them, he notices it would, on a normal day, brighten Phil’s already sunny mood immensely. This wasn’t a normal day. Despite all of this, it still makes Phil smile. It wasn’t his wide and brilliant smile, but it was a smile.

“Yeah?” He asked quietly, his eyes meeting Dan’s for the first time in a long time.

“On our year-a-versary, do you want to eat cereal and watch Buffy in bed with me?”

There was the ghost of a smile on Phil’s face. Dan supposed that was pretty good for someone who had almost been crushed by a jumbo jet. It wasn’t going to make things better, but maybe it would take his mind off things for a while.

“I really would like to.”

Dan couldn’t stop looking at the nightmare flowers as he and Phil made their way to their bedroom. Dan didn’t know why, but his body ached with the foreboding feeling of dread.


	15. To Dream Without Sleep (The End of Daydreams)

**_Oh, my talking bird_ **

**_Though your feathers are tattered and furled_ **

**_I'll love you all your days_ **

**_Till the breath leaves your delicate frame_ **

**_\- Death Cab for Cutie_ **

It was in times of crisis when you really wished things could go back to being ‘ordinary’. That was how Dan felt come the morning after the sky falling. He wished he and Phil would wake up, make coffee, watch anime and just go back to being Dan and Phil. That, of course, was not how things panned out.

Neither of the boys slept a wink that night. They had powered through episode after episode of Buffy before finally turning the TV off. The both only pretended to sleep. For once Phil didn’t pester Dan about not sleeping. Dan wasn’t even sure he noticed. He was trapped inside his own head, locked so far down within himself, Dan was scarcely sure he could find him again.

They cuddle all night. That was something different. The two slept together so often that what had once been Dan’s room was now just referred to as their spare bedroom, but they never cuddled. It wasn’t practical. They had tried, but would often wake up with dead arms or stolen covers. Tonight, however, neither slept so neither moved. They just lay there quietly, cuddled into one another, listening to each other breathing. Dan found himself mindlessly rolling over, so the two were facing one another leaning over to fiddle with his hair, trying to get Phil’s mind off whatever kept replaying over and over in it. Dan knew what it was like, and Phil had always been the one to drag him out of his own self-pity. It was only sensible he did the same.

“I like your hair,” Dan commented faintly because it seemed like a safe topic of conversation.

“I like yours more,” Phil whispered back to him, reaching out and brushing a curl from Dan’s face, before leaning over to grab his glasses, as if to get a better look.

“I like it best when it’s curly.”

Dan found himself leaning against Phil’s steady hand. He found his face at home in the warmth of the hands he knew like the back of his own. Phil just looked at him, quietly taking him in.

“Don't get used to it. I can tell it’s a phase,” Phil raised a sleepy brow as if pushing Dan to go on.

“I always go through phases. My life is a series of phases. At this rate, I’m not sure I’m ever going to know who I am.”

Dan had come to realise that he was a depressingly open book, while the more he got to know Phil, the more he realised there was to know. He wasn’t always quite as open as he appeared.

“I know who you are, you could just ask me.” Dan rolled his eyes,

“No, you don’t-”

“Yeah I do, sure you might change your opinion, or your style or even your friends but at the end of the day, you are still you. You are still an over thinker, with an amazing sense of humour and a slightly dramatic batch of emotions.” Dan raised a brow.

“Was that your nice way of calling me a morose drama queen who on the odd occasion is funny?”

Phil chuckled and it was the first laugh Dan had heard him give since the incident. This didn’t mean things were better, but it did mean he was finding his way to talk around the bad. Phil leant over and pecked Dan’s lips. 

This was another surprise. They weren’t an overly affectionate couple. They were best friends, who just so happened to also be in love. The most they would do in public was standing close to one another, or hold hands at a gathering. In private they were always attached at the hip, but that was normally enough.

He was learning that a slightly unhappy Phil seemed to love affection and so, Dan mindlessly draped his hand over Phil’s side, looking him over and moved closer, leaning their foreheads together. He didn’t move to kiss the boy. Instead, he just stayed that close.

“I love you,” Phil noted and Dan smirked bumping their noses together in a teasing manner.

“You’re only saying that because you know you offended me you spork.”

“I am not… only saying it because of that. I’m also saying it because it’s kind of true,” Phil countered.

“Only kind of? Should I take offence?”

Phil rolled his eyes and burrowed his face into Dan’s shoulder. Dan shyly embraced the situation and leant down to nuzzle into Phil’s hair. It seemed like a new kind of intimate.

“My mum asked me to come home for a few days when I called her after you two talked and after I…”

Phil didn’t finish but Dan didn’t need him to. It was after Phil had calmed down enough to be able to speak. It didn’t matter if it was a ludicrous hour of the morning, Phil’s mum would pick up and talk him down.

“I think I want to go home tomorrow, just for a little bit.”

Phil moved his head back again so he could see Dan’s face and so Dan did the same. He could understand Phil wanting to go home, it was sensible.

“Okay,” Dan uttered because even though this would likely mean he and Phil would be apart (something Dan utterly hated) if that was what Phil needed then Dan could suck it up for a few days.

“I don’t think she would mind if you came with me. You are the first boyfriend, my parents have actually liked.”

Dan raised a brow. He seemed quietly smitten by this fact. He moved his hand over to push Phil’s glasses back from the tip of his nose and smirked. He liked Phil’s family, his parents and his brother, they felt whole. It was more than Dan thought his family could ever feel again.

“I’m a train wreck, Phil, what the hell was your other boyfriends like?” Phil let out a wheezy laugh,

“Most of them were just emo boys in bands with way too skinny jeans. There was this one guy with a Mohawk and a lip ring. They didn’t mind some of the girls I’ve dated, but they’ve never really ‘liked’ anyone besides you.”

Dan found himself grinning in a smitten manner. He recalled the first time he saw Phil’s family. Phil had invited him down for his brother’s birthday. Dan had felt utterly nervous to meet Phil’s family, but in an instant, it felt like coming home.

Phil’s mother had wrapped her arms around his taller frame while his father held out a stern hand to shake and began to start up a conversation, which surprisingly Dan could follow and fell into quite easily. It was something to do with an animal documentary. He had lived with Phil long enough to know the one they were talking about and finally understood Phil’s odd love for animals and trivia. Even Martyn greeted Dan more as an old friend than a stranger.

“Well, I really like your family as well, but I don’t think I can get off work that easily… I would have to give them a few days’ notice and by the time I could get down you would probably just be wanting to come home.”

Dan wasn’t sure how the name of their flat had changed. This is where he had lived for a little less than a year with Phil and several years before that by himself. It had never been home. It was just his flat. Then one day it was the flat, then their flat. Now it was just home.

“Oh, you’re probably right… I won’t be gone that long. I could stay if you wanted me to.”

Dan did want him to stay, but only because he didn’t want him to go. It was selfish. Dan had spent his whole life being selfish. With Phil, he didn’t want to be that person anymore. Phil looked like he needed to go, and it was Dan’s job not to stand in the way.

“Go,” He insisted leaning over and pecking the boy’s cheek.

“I know you want to go, it’s okay. I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself for a couple of days.”

Phil smiled faintly and nodded, leaning over to kiss Dan once more before rolling away from Dan’s side and out of bed.

“I better start packing then.”

***

Dan stood at King’s Cross station, his hands firmly shoved in his pockets to hide the fact he was balling them into fists. He didn’t want to see Phil go, but he knew it was best for him. He thought it was. He didn’t know.

There was something in the back of his mind that told him this wasn’t it, but he ignored it. He passed it off as impending loneliness and instead chose to stick close to Phil on the platform, gravitating close to him. He felt something inside him, pulling him closer still. Again, he passed it off as loneliness.

Many people had decided to travel out of London that day as the underground was crowded to capacity. Dan was rubbing shoulders with figures all dressed in varying tones of black and grey. It looked as if everyone was dressed for a funeral. Dan supposed it was possible some were. It was a funeral kind of day.

Everyone seemed to hold different looks of complexed grief. He supposed that could happen in the day prior to a plane had fallen on your head and you were told to trudge through feet of snow to attend work bright and early as usual. It felt like a day of mourning. Even the children that littered the platform seemed to notice. They were quiet, no running or screaming. It was just, quiet. Dan pulled his phone from his pocket and check the time, over and over again. They had sixteen minutes, wait- seventeen.

It was seventeen minutes until the train arrived.  

“Did you remember to pack everything?” Dan asked, trying to make conversation, fighting off the swelling pit of dread in his stomach.

“I wouldn’t remember if I forgot, would I?” Phil asked, seeming to notice Dan’s tension and attempted to make a joke. Phil had been off as well, but Dan had expected that. You didn’t go through what he did and just be sunshine and rainbows. Not even Phil could manage that. He was human. He bled and breathed. Sadness was just a part of humanities’ package deal.

“I guess not, did you remember your laptop at least, so I can Skype you?” Phil scoffed.

“In what universe would I forget my laptop?” True.

“Okay, fine. Good. Call me when you get there, okay?” Phil nodded his head, seeming to notice something was off.

Phil moved his hand into Dan’s pocket, trying to coax his hands into a relaxed position and holding them tightly. Dan wasn’t the one who needed to be comforted. This was stupid.

“Don’t forget to show off your piano playing skills that I showed you. Your mum loved when I played stuff on her piano the last time I was over,” Phil smiled faintly.

“Yes, but you are way better than me. She will be nowhere near as impressed.”

Dan gave his shoulders a little shrug. He caught eyes with a woman, just for an instant. Her eyes were slightly tired. Her hair just longer than shoulder length, a mousy shade of brown. Her eyes then moved over to the train times. They had a little under ten minutes. Dan looked back to Phil.

“Hey, I think you are pretty amazing Phil.”

Phil rolled his eyes, in a teasing manner before holding Dan’s hand that little bit tighter. The pit at the bottom of his stomach rose to a lump in his throat as the minutes ticked away. He thought of their home, where those bloody flowers sat, leering at the empty flat. He heard the crackling of a radio playing old rock music over the speakers. Normally you wouldn’t hear it but the station was utterly still. It didn’t seem possible yet this was the best way Dan could think do describe it.

The train pulled into the station.

Phil pulled his hand from Dan’s.

A tether inside him snapped.

There was nothing he could do.

Before Dan knew it, Phil was pulling his things towards the entrance of the train and waving goodbye. Dan caught a glimpse of his hands as he waved and felt as though he was suffocating. His mind was beginning to click things into place. He knew what was happening and he couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe.

He didn’t know how it would happen, but he knew he was about to lose Phil. He knew it and that didn't help. Every time he had tried to stop something bad from happening, it would happen anyway. There was no way of stopping this. He still had to try, he had to do something. Phil seemed unaware of Dan’s inner turmoil. He caught the younger boy’s eye before stepping into the train and yelled out,

“I love you, I’ll call you when I get there.”

He wasn’t going to get there.

Dan was blinking away tears, watching as Phil moved out of his sight. The speakers either side of the platform announced that the doors were closing. Dan didn’t have time to think. He ran, his hand jutting out to stop the door from shutting before it was too late.

He made his choice. He entered the train.

***

At first, Dan thought that finding Phil would be impossible. All he saw was the backs of anonymous travellers. They held an eerily familiar feeling. He locked eyes with a blue-lipped boy. A half there boy who simply pointed down the carriage. It was then Dan noticed Phil, his large frame curled against the window seat, looking as if he were about to settle in for a long nap. Phil always got travel sick, so it made sense he would try to sleep through the train ride. When he turned back to thank the blue-lipped boy he was met with an empty seat.

He moved forward, sliding into the spare seat beside Phil, watching the older boy look his way then jump slightly in surprise. He opened and shut his mouth a few times out of confusion while Dan rolled his eyes, trying to keep his look of composure.

“I thought I’d come along for the ride,” Dan mused faintly, stealing part of the jumper Phil had draped over himself and took it for his own, quietly cuddling up with the older lad.

“You’re mental. It’s about a two-hour drive there and another two hours back.” Dan shrugged.

“I don’t mind, it’s not like I have anything better to do.  Plus, you would have no one to play your travel games with, and what fun would that be?” Phil looked over at him before laughing and shaking his head.

 “Fine, but you are actually mad.”

“I’m alright with being mad,” Dan assured.

“Now, the most important question, cats or dogs?”

They had all kinds of travel games to keep Phil’s mind off the journey. This was the most popular. Dan wasn’t even sure what to call it. They would just give each other an option of this or that. It would always start off innocently enough, but would never end in the same fashion.

“Dogs,” Phil answered and Dan smiled nodding.

“Me too.”

“Hogs or dogs?”

“Dogs.” This time they both answered and chuckled as Dan felt the train start to move.

“Hogs or logs?”

This continued in the same manner as Dan found himself snuggled impossibly closer to Phil’s side. They talked and talked. Dan had to keep talking to stop himself from thinking. He had just made a choice he couldn’t take back. For once, he was sure it was the right one.

“Phil?” He asked quietly, interrupting their game to show that his next question would be slightly more serious.

“Would you rather have never met me or never know what it’s like to be without me?”

Dan watched as Phil’s brow furrowed and he turned to get a proper look at Dan’s face.

“Never know what it’s like without you. I don’t know what I’d do if I never met you, what kind of question is that?” Phil looked genuinely worried for a moment, the last thing Dan wanted was for Phil to be worried and so he shook his head and rests it on Phil’s shoulder.

“A stupid one. I’m just tired, maybe we should try to get some sleep.”

Phil’s face still looked slightly suspicious, but instead of questioning, he just pulled Dan closer, wrapping his jumper around the two of them and resting his head on Dan’s.

“That might actually be a good idea.”

“I have good ideas from time to time,” Dan whispered, but really he just didn’t want Phil to feel whatever was coming. Maybe this way it could be like just going to sleep. He wouldn’t allow himself the luxury.

“Love you,” Phil mused quietly and Dan had to suck air in through his teeth to hold back the small sob that rose in his chest,

“Love you too.” He held on to Phil that little bit tighter.

“I’ll wake you when we get there.”

Phil was already half asleep, leaving Dan to stare into space and count down the seconds. He still didn’t know when, or how, but something very wrong was about to happen.

They must have almost been out of London when the cracks started to show. He noticed the blue-lipped boy again, seated across from Phil and himself. He noticed the way the train suddenly started to sway more violently. It felt like he was breathing underwater.

Then it finally came.

Even though Dan had spent the whole trip waiting for something to go wrong the second it did, his whole world still flipped on its head. It sounded like the heavens had cracked in two like the stars had fallen all at once and erupted in a violent rumble. They were at the back of the train, while the front filled with pieces of fallen stars, all set ablaze. The roof began to crack and split in two.

His ears were ringing and he couldn’t hear a thing as he felt the train surge sideward and the city of London crumble down atop of them. He found himself being thrown towards the window, he tried to place himself between Phil and the glass, his hand smashing through it as it shattered on his skin. Jagged glass teeth biting flesh.

Phil awoke with wide eyes, his face filled with a quiet terror. From there Dan couldn’t track what had happened. Somehow there were no longer moving. Somehow they were laying in rubble, his shattered hand holding onto Phil for dear life. They lay like a mess in the dirt with the streets of London scattered around their feet, this had to be intentional. Dan quietly reminded himself that he chose this.

It wasn’t brave or heroic. It was stupid. It was martyrdom. But it was the only choice he would be able to live with.

If he tried to stop it, it would end up like all the other times. He couldn’t stop it and so, his own quiet rebellion was to become it. Phil was bleeding and confused. Dan didn’t feel a thing, his whole body running on adrenaline.

Phil’s eyes met Dan’s and he saw, what he thought was understanding. Phil opened his mouth to say something, but it was instantly shattered by a coughing fit, there was blood in places Dan had never seen blood come from.  Dan tried to hush him, his own voice coming out ragged and hoarse.

“Hey, it’s okay. I told you to get some sleep. I’ll wake you when we get there.”

Dan moved their battered bodies closer, pressing their foreheads together, feeling Phil’s breath fall into time with his own.

They closed their eyes and finally started dreaming.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so here we are at the end. First of all thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone for getting this far. I can't express enough how much it means for all those who have commented, given kudos or just come along the journey with me. I can't express my gratitude enough for each and every one of you. Since it is the end I will now be free to pursue other projects as well, which I'm sure I will do so if anyone had anything particular in mind feel free to leave it in the comments. For now, however, I guess this is the end. It's not a goodbye, but a see you soon.  
> Please leave your feelings in the comments, I would love to hear what you thought.


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